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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE PSYCHIC FACTOR 



AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



BY 

CHARLES VAN NORDEN, D. D., LL. D. 

LATE PRESIDENT OF ELMIRA COLLEGE 






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NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1894 



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Copyright, 1894, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



Electrotyped and Printed 

AT THE ApPLETON PrESS, U. S. A. 



PEEFACE. 



The purpose and spirit of this little book is 
strictly scientific. If any justification for its appear- 
ance be needed, the public will find ample in the 
unsettled condition of the metaphysical world, in the 
marvelous strides of biological and psychical discovery, 
and the utter demoralization of the old psychology. 
The Psychic Factor is not addressed to the populace, 
nor yet to original investigators, but to students. It 
is intended to embody the trustworthy results of safe 
thought in the realm of current psychology. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/psychicfactorout01vann 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

INTRODUCTION. 

I. — The Science defined 1 

IL— Methods . . .11 

III. — History and Bibliography 13 

Part I. — Mind in General. 

Section I. — The Psychic Factor Consid- 
ered Comparatively. 

I.— Mind in Plants . . . . . , .14 

II.— Mind in Animals 20 

III. — The Nervous System 24 

ly. — A Survey of Nerve Systems in the Order of Com- 
plexity 30 

V. — General Reflections upon the Psychic Factor 

Comparatively Viewed 86 

Section II. — Consciousness. 

YI. — Consciousness in General 42 

VII.— Attention 44 

VIII. — The Enchaining and Grouping Function of Con- 
sciousness 47 

IX.— The General Quality of Mental States . . .51 
X. — The Influence of Mental States on Organic Func- 
tions 61 



VI 



THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Section III. — Subconsciousness. 

XI. — Subconsciousness in General .... 67 

XII.— Sleep 69 

XIII.— Dreaming 72 

XIV. — Somnambulism 80 

XY.— Hypnosis - . .84 

XYI.— The Hypnotic Sleep Personality ... 91 

XYII.— Thought-Transference 103 

XYIIL— Lucidity . . . ... . .107 

XIX.— Hallucination . . . . . . .110 

Section lY.— The Psychology of Disease. 

XX.— Hysteria 118 

XXI.— Criminality . . 120 



Part II.— Mind in Detail. 

Section I.— The Sensory and Motor end 
Organs. 

XXII.— The Evolution of the End Orpans 
XXIII.— The End Organs of Touch 
XXIY.— Muscular Sense . 
XXY.— The End Organs of Smell . 
XXYI.— The End Organs of Taste . 
XXYII.— The Temperature End Organs 

XXYIII.— Sight 

XXIX.— Hearing .... 
XXX.— The Motor End Organs . 



128 
133 
136 
138 
142 
144 
146 
152 
156 



Section II. — Analysis op the Cognitive 
Powers. 

XXXI. — Synthesis of Sense Impressions .... 157 

XXXII.— Sensation 158 

XXXIII.— The Perceptive Process 166 

XXXIY.— Memory .175 

XXXY.— The Recollective Process 178 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. yii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXXVI.— Imagination 182 

XXXVII. — The Comparative Processes — Conception, 

Judgment, and Reasoning .... 188 

XXXVIII.— Formal Tliought . . . . . .200 

XXXIX.— Review 205 

Section III. — The Feelings and the 
Will. 

XL.— The Feelings 208 

XLL— Willing 213 

Index 219 



THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 



INTRODUCTION. 
CHAPTER I. 

THE SCIEI^CE DEFIi^TED. 

1. Psychology investigates mind. By mind we 
mean all psychic states, whether of intellection, feeling, 
or volition — in short, the psychic factor. 

2. Eecent psychology has been described as ex- 
perimental and physiological, simply because practical 
rather than speculative — an attempt at exact science 
in a realm which hitherto has been proverbial for its 
vagueness, assumption, and contradictions. 

3. All sciences have had their birth in regions of 
ignorance, and hence of superstition and of specula- 
tion. First came blank ignorance, after that super- 
stitious interpretation, and then philosophic specula- 
tion. Exact science began only with experimentation, 
and has proceeded by induction. Alchemy, at first a 
sorcerous attempt to convert stones into gold, only 
after ages of puzzled thought became chemistry. 
Suidas says jhat the Golden Fleece was simply a 
parchment on which was written this art of transmu- 



4 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

into groups for purposes of study has not been, nor is 
likely to be, improved upon. 

5. But long ago the vein was well worked out ; and 
on this line of effort nothing remains to do but to erect 
new structures of guesswork, and to batter down old 
ones just as well and just as ill founded. 

6. The lackings of the speculative method are four- 
fold : 

(1) Introspection begins and ends with the thinker 
himself ; while the psychic factor is found in all living 
matter, and in every creature challenges study. 

(2) In the thinker, introspection is limited to the 
present moment and to memory of a personal past. 
It can not investigate even its own evolutionary ante- 
cedents. 

(3) It is utterly excluded from that vast realm of 
the subconscious, which forms the most interesting de- 
partment in the psychology of to-day. 

(i) It is embarrassed by its own prejudices and 
delusions. It were easy to show that it constantly 
mistakes mediate knowledge for immediate, acquired 
knowledge for innate, and inherited for necessary. 

7. Though it be in methods experimental, psychol- 
ogy needs must start out with a postulate. For there 
can be no explanation without something to explain, 
and all philosophy brings us to ultimates. Psychology 
runs back upon three ultimates — matter, life and mind. 
These it fails to analyze into simpler elements or to 
identify beyond a peradventure with one another. 
Speculation may, of course, devise hypotheses to ana- 
lyze or to unify but all evidence fails. Hypotheses 
here have proved utterly barren. The endless battles 
of metaphysicians over these stubborn, elusive ele- 



THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 5 

ments, in vain speculation, have been and can be only 
Walhalla conflicts of ghosts, that hew one another to 
pieces each day, on the morrow to renew the aimless 
strife joyfully and vainly. 

8. We will note the five hypotheses that challenge 
our criticism at the present time, only to illustrate that 
folly of claiming to know too much which has always 
cursed psychology : 

(1) Materialism. Matter embraces mind. Atoms 
and forces beget ideas, which are material entities. 
Consciousness is only a series of those mental materials. 
In short, matter has latent in it the promise and po- 
tency of mind. Mill, Spencer, Tyndall, and a host of 
English philosophers, and Comte and his disciples 
among the French, and Herbart and his followers 
among the Germans, have held this doctrine. 

(2) Idealism. Mind embraces matter. Ideas be- 
get atoms and forces. Material phenomena are only 
phases of consciousness. In short, mind has in it the 
promise and potency of matter. As Omar Khayyam 
in the Eubaiyat declares : 

" We are no other than a moving row 
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go." 

Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling stand prominent 
among idealists. 

(3) Ideal realism. Matter is parallel with mind. 
Ideas and things, thought and being, are parallel one 
to the other. By some mysterious coarrangement 
(occasionalism according to Descartes, pre-established 
harmony according to Leibnitz) the two series accom- 
pany one another, mind and body perfectly attuned 
— soprano and bass — but without causal connection. 
Lotze seems to find refuge in such a scheme. 



6 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

(4) Monism. Matter is mind. Ideas and things, 
thought and being, are identical. Consciousness is 
an aspect of certain material forces. Says Fechner, 
'' What from an internal point of view seems to be 
your spirit, seems from an external point of view to be 
the bodily substratum of that spirit." If you stand on 
the inside of a hollow sphere you see only the concav- 
ity of its surface ; if on the outside, only its convexity. 
Yet it is the same surface. 

(5) Matter and mind are different in substance, but 
a causal connection exists between them. Atoms and 
forces on the one hand, and thought on the other ! 
Body and soul, each substantial but of utterly different 
substance ! The soul sways the body and the body af- 
fects the soul, there being a causal nexus. This is the 
popular, the traditional, and the simplest explanation. 
A very able defense of this view may be found in the 
closing chapters of Prof. Ladd's Physiological Psy- 
chology. 

9. At first sight these hypotheses seem utterly di- 
verse, and doubtless are advocated by men of widely 
different temperaments, beliefs, and tendencies. But 
the diversity at bottom is more seeming than real 
and is owing to our reading into them meanings de- 
rived from prejudice. If the first be true, and matter 
be capable of generating mind, then in matter must be 
dormant all the properties that can be shown to have 
ever inhered in the psychic factor, and it is no longer 
gross and inert but as truly spiritual as material. If, 
however, the second hypothesis be accurate, and if it be 
the function of mind to generate matter, why, thoughts 
are quite substantial and visions full of solidity, force, 
and point. And if matter and mind be parallel, 



THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 7 

which is the worse or different for that fact ? And if 
matter and mind be identical — only inside and outside 
of the same curved surface — what does this signify ? 
On any of these hypotheses you have broached a pos- 
sible fact, which is, however, utterly barren in prac- 
tical bearings. 

We naturally think of a materialist as a gross, , 
wooden-headed, leaden-hearted thinker, but there is 
nothing to prevent in him the loftiest flights of poetry 
and spirituality. And we are tempted to judge the 
idealist as an insane skeptic ; he may be and often is, 
however, a perfectly matter-of-fact person, given to 
hunger, athletics, and ionliommie. If you must have 
a hypothesis, choose one of these five, but do not de- 
ceive yoarself with the idea that you have added to 
your stock of knowledge. So far as knowledge goes, 
there are three unresolvable ultimates — matter, life, 
and mind. These may be capable of resolution, they 
may in time be resolved, but as yet they are to all ex- 
perimentation elements. And so the wag was quite 
right, who, when asked what mind was, replied, " No 
matter," and when asked what then matter was, an- 
swered, " Never mind." Well says Tyndall : " The 
problem of the connection of body and soul is as in- 
solvable in its modern form as it was in the prehistoric 
ages." And Huxley : " How anything so remarkable 
as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irri- 
tating nervous tissue is just as unaccountable as the ap- 
pearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." 
Yet both of these men are pronounced materialists. 

10. Two affirmations we may safely make of the re- 
lations existing between the three ultimates, that em- 
phasize the radical nature of the distinction : 



8 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

(1) That particular molecules of matter may come 
and go in continuous interchange, without disturbing 
the vital or psychic processes in the least. This occurs 
in oxidation, secretion and excretion. In animal or 
plant, living matter is in perpetual flux. 

(2) When mind and life depart in death the matter 
remains, so far as science can discover, chemically and 
physically the same. 

These two facts throw discredit upon theories that 
confuse or identify the three ultimates. 

11. Indeed, we shall find that while we push back 
the barriers of knowledge, beyond them lurk abysses 
we can not penetrate. Several things are to be re- 
membered : 

(1) We are dealing in this realm with forces in- 
finitely more attenuated, subtile, and lively than we 
ourselves as a whole are. Thus, in vision we are deal- 
ing with light. Eeflect that every second of vision, a 
cone of light for each luminous point viewed enters 
the eye at the rate of one hundred and eighty thou- 
sand miles. Gaze at a star. For every second of such 
vision a ray of light one hundred and eighty thousand 
miles long slides into the pupil. This ray is a vibra- 
tion of ether and enters in the form of waves, and 
breaks upon the retina as the ocean upon the seashore 
in a sort of ethereal surf. In one second not less than 
five hundred billions of these light-waves dash into the 
eye to beat against the optic shore of nerves. And this 
shore of nerves is composed of one hundred million 
nerve elements to the square inch ; each of which re- 
ceives a separate impulse, and all of which work in 
harmony. There is no end to such facts. We are 
subtler in detail than as a whole. As psychic beings 



THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 9 

we master or are mastered by forces of inconceivable 
divisibility and subtility. 

(2) Then, again, it is the fate of mind, when in- 
quiring after causes and essences, to reach speedily the 
limits of knowledge ; and to attempt to penetrate be- 
yond is sheer folly. All the woes of metaphysicians 
have come from this foolhardiness. Ultimate facts 
will encounter us everywhere, marking the insur- 
mountable barriers of thought. With them we must 
pause. Our final knowledge is and will probably ever 
be but a light shining in darkness. 

(3) We are in a universe which bristles with prob- 
lems that the human mind may at some future time 
solve, but which can not be successfully treated at 
present. 

12. The purpose of experimental psychology, then, 
is not to find out all psychic facts, nor to find out any 
psychic fact to perfection, but simply to discover and 
arrange relative and ^eriv^tive facts, to push out the 
barriers, to study mental methods, and to weigh the 
validity of mental operation. 

13. It is therefore not a study of mental results 
but of mental processes — not what we see, but how 
we see ; not what we think, but how we think ; not 
what we feel, but how we feel. The results of mental 
action we have in various other sciences — astronomy, 
biology, chemistry, etc. Psychology tries to discover 
by what powers and methods we attain these results. 
It is the scientist turning from the world to study 
himself. It is a response to the everlasting " know 
thyself " of inquisitive philosophy. 

14. This science is naturally and necessarily dom- 
inated by recent discoveries bearing upon the extreme 

2 



10 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

probability of an organic evolution. If man is the end 
of a series of growths allied genetically to lower minds, 
comparative psychology assumes first importance, and 
our study begins with the monad and finds a very good 
implement in analogy. In these lectures the evolu- 
tionary hypothesis is adopted as a working theory. It 
is not claimed as beyond peradventure proved, but only 
as best explaining the facts. Evolutionary language is 
used and the movement is by the paths of supposed 
evolutionary ascension. 

15. The scope of this science is as far-reaching as 
the phenomena of life ; for life never appears without 
mind as its correlative. Hence biology, the science of 
life, and psychology, the science of mind, are kindred 
in aims, and constantly cross one another's path. His- 
tory recording the actions of men furnishes perpetual 
and diversified illustrations of psychic operation. As 
Herbart well claimed, " psychology shoots its roots into 
the sciences of life and blossoms in the historical sci- 
ences." * 

16. The future of psychology is very promising. 
Myers is justified in saying that "there will be no 
calise for surprise if, as time goes on, man's experi- 
ments on the world without should yield in interest 
and importance to his experiments upon himself. In- 
ward the course of empire takes its way ! . . . All that 
he has learned without himself has been but a means 
to the comprehension of that which was within." 



METHODS. 11 

CHAPTER 11. 

METHODS. 

1. Chemical and physical. Because mind is always 
associated with matter, and the laws of material com- 
position and motion underlie the entire physiology of 
the senses and the organic functions. The study of the 
direct relations of mind and matter has been termed 
psycho-physics ; it busies itself chiefly with the relation 
between the quality and intensity of stimulus and the 
quality and intensity of psychic reaction. Closely as- 
sociated with this is psychometry, or the time-meas- 
urement of psychic reaction. 

2. Biological. For mind is always associated with 
life, and we must study the living cell in its life his- 
tory in order to investigate psychic processes in their 
simplest forms and lowest degrees. Here we need the 
Ynicroscope; for this reveals to us a new world of 
thought, feeling and action. 

3. Anatomical and physiological. For mind at its 
best is associated with structures of great and signifi- 
cant complexity admitting of vivisection and dissec- 
tion. Considerable knowledge of structure and func- 
tion is now required by psychologists. 

4. Pathological. Because mind in its various pro- 
cesses is associated with localities in structure. A 
study of disease often enables us to locate functions. 
This method, however, is exceedingly difficult and 
misleading, because of our ignorance of disease, and 
because of the interrelations of the entire nervous sys- 
tem. Valuable results will flow only from the most 



12 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

patient, prolonged and unprejudiced observation and 
reflection. 

5. Psychical. For mind is never found unasso- 
ciated with other minds ; and subtle interrelations are 
clearly discernible. Hence, hypnotic experimentation 
has of late years, been much resorted to, as enabling 
one, the agent, in studying another, the sensitive, by 
suggestion and command to operate separately upon 
different sets of nerve centers. And hence, also, the 
value of studies in thought-transference, lucidity, and 
similar phenomena. These particular methods have 
come to group themselves together under the conven- 
ient heading. Psychical Kesearch. 

6> Introspective. Last and best. Mind's highest 
knowledge is self-knowledge. I am always chez moi — 
at home with myself. Introspection must begin and 
end, accompany and correct, all our devising, albeit 
with due regard to the necessary limitations. 



CHAPTER HI. 

HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. ExPERiMEiSTTAL psychology was rendered inevi- 
table by the labors of Bacon and Leibnitz in the seven- 
teenth century. Bain, Mill, Spencer, Taine, John 
Mueller, Weber, Fechner, and Lotze have been the 
prophets of its annunciation and exposition. Its pres- 
ent advocates are many, and they are the authorities 
in mental science. 

2. Something of a division of labor, resulting from 
a varying direction of interest, occurs to-day among 



HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 13 

psychical expositors. In England and America com- 
parative psychology and psychical research are upper- 
most; in Germany, psycho-physics; and in France, 
pathological psychology. 

3. Any one beginning in earnest the study is advised 
first to master a good history of philosophy, like Erd- 
mann's or Ueberweg's, then Bain's The Senses and 
The Intellect, and The Emotions and The Will. After 
that, H. Spencer's Principles of Psychology. These 
simply to prepare the way for Lotze's Microcosm, 
Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic, and Ladd's 
Physiological Psychology. It will be well to add 
Janet's Automatisme Psychologique, if one read 
French and Binet on the Psychic Life of Micro- 
organisms. A great many articles in scientific maga- 
zines, pamphlets and books, of much value and intense 
interest, are now constantly appearing. Psychical re- 
search engages at the present time the rapt attention 
of many keen minds and the publications of the Eng- 
lish Society of Psychical Kesearch will repay careful 
perusal. 

To keep in touch with the great leaders of what 
may be termed orthodox psychology one must be con- 
versant with the works of such writers as McCosh, 
Sully, Baldwin, and Hoeffding. 



PART I. 
MIND IN GENERAL. 



SECTION I. 
THE PSYCHIC FACTOR CONSIDEEED COMPARATIVELY. 



CHAPTER L 

MIKD IN PLANTS. ^ 

1. Living matter is always psychic. At first this 
statement may seem startling in its involvements, but 
it is simply a corollary not only of the theory of evolu- 
tion, but as well of the unquestioned facts of develop- 
ment. 

(1) We must infer it from the facts of develop- 
ment. Take our own human life-history, from ovum 
to maturity. The fertilized human egg is at first a 
single living cell, but directly, by division of the 
nucleus, it becomes an aggregate of cells. This aggre- 
gate takes shape as a sac or gastrula. Out of the gas- 
trula arises a vertebrate creature of lowest notochord 
type ; and this forms a spinal column, soon to appear 
as clearly a mammal. Last of all comes the human 
infant — child — youth— adult ; and the series ends per- 



MIND IN PLANTS. 15 

chance in Plato, Shakespeare, or Tennyson. Now this 
progress is a close continuous unfolding of the original 
cell. There is no gap for mind to creep into during 
the movement. The original cell, simple and un- 
divided, must at the start be viewed as psychic. If 
mind is to be found at last in Plato, we must presup- 
pose it in the egg ; if that egg be merely chemical and 
physical, why, so is Plato. 

(2) We must infer the same from the evolution of 
intelligences in the organic world. There is an un- 
broken gradation of them, a series of ever-expanding 
numbers. There is no beginning place for mind any- 
where in the evolutionary movement. Deny it at the 
bottom, and you must fail to get it all the way up. 
Claim it for the philosopher, and the claim runs down 
to the monad. Animal mind presupposes vegetal 
mind; and the mental rhythm of creation is dual. 
The logical result of denial will be complete skep- 
ticism, which ultimately must hold man himself as a 
mere machine — as, indeed, even so shrewd a thinker 
as Huxley has already boldly urged. Were there no 
evidence of intelligence in low forms, based on obser- 
vation, we should need to infer it as at least a latent 
presence. 

2. But we need not depend upon theoretical con- 
sideration ; ample observation establishes the connec- 
tion between mind and even the simplest life beyond 
peradventure. One may of course claim, that to infer 
intelligence from such action in low forms as would 
warrant the conclusion in human beings, is unjustifi- 
able on the ground of the relative inferiority of the 
former. The difference, however, is rather of quantity 
than of quality. Purposive and ingenious conduct is 



16 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR 

quite as trustworthy testimony in a micro-organism, 
for instance, as in a domestic animal or a human 
neighbor. The surety equals at least that of any ob- 
servation of other intelligence than our own. And no 
living form fails to furnish the desired evidence. In 
this chapter will be cited in testimony those represent- 
atives of life which, in common parlance, are named 
plants, including the lowest protophytes. 

3. The psychic difference between plants and ani- 
mals is simply one of degree. Vegetals are feebly psy- 
chic, animals intensely so. To begin at the bottom, 
let us consider the slime-molds, which are mere naked 
masses of jelly like matter, chiefly protoplasm, that 
ooze over decayed trunks of fallen forest trees or rot- 
ting bark in tannery yards. Thiselton Dyer claims that 
this inert, formless, f unctionless substance can be edu- 
cated to the extent, at least, of learning to accept food 
at first rejected. Moreover, the mass at some time in 
its endless existence breaks up into swarm spores and 
becomes active, with no little indication of psychosis. 
All a-quiver, these swarm spores react upon stimulus, 
and dart to and fro seeking food, with precision and 
seeming prevision, until, this phase of life passing, 
they fuse together to form new plasmodia. A very 
large number of simple plants enjoy a similar period 
of swarming and intense activity. 

4. Scarcely higher — perhaps even lower — in the 
scale are the microbes of putrefaction, fermentation, 
and disease. P. F. Frankland, in a popular lecture on 
these forms, claims for them individuality and capacity 
for education. He says : " In fact, experimenting with 
micro-organisms partakes rather of the nature of legis- 
lating for a community than of directing the inani- 



MIND IN PLANTS. 17 

mate energies of chemical molecules. Thus frequently 
the past history of a group of micro-organisms has to 
be taken into account when . dealing with them ; for 
their tendencies may have become greatly modified by 
the experiences of their ancestors." However this 
may be, it is now known that bacteria possess an oxy- 
gen sense, by which they detect the presence of oxygen 
at a distance and are able to seek it. Moreover, they 
can gauge the quantity of this gas, and if it prove too 
intense they flee it. Engelmann claims that bacteria 
can, detect one trillionth of a milligramme of oxygen, 
or, in other words, a solitary molecule. 

5. The Desmids, a pretty order of green plants, 
each of but one cell, possess a sunshine sense. We 
discover no pigment spots, but without failure they 
find the sunny side of the tumbler in which they are 
imprisoned, in order to expose to the sunbeams their 
chlorophyl and work their simple machinery of nutri- 
tive assimilation. They distinguish light from dark- 
ness, and in the light find the sunbeam. 

6. In colonies of Pandorina^ a higher form, some of 
the cells possess pigment spots that serve as rude eyes 
— not, of course, for vision, but simply to sense the 
sunbeam. While the Desmids have only a light sense, 
Pandorina has a light sense organ. 

7. Many colonies of one-cell plants show a sort of 
aggregate intelligence. These are veritable confeder- 
acies, not organically one, but dominated by a common 
purpose and united in common movements. We may 
still have swarmspores or zoospores, and a motile 
period and mutual attraction and fusion ; but there is 
added combination for security, motion and nutrition. 
Oscillatoria is a case in point ; it is simply a cylindrical 



18 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

filament of cells, each shaped like a pill box and piled 
end on end. Its confederate action is merely a sway- 
ing of the filament to and fro in rhythmic oscilla- 
tion. The psychic harmony seems based upon proto- 
plasmic contact. 

8. More surprising are those combinations of cells 
which form not so much confederacies as true unions, 
with organic interharmony and public functions, also, 
doubtless, based on protoplasmic contact. These are 
often spoken of as (vegetal) "persons." . A fine exam- 
ple is Volvox — a beautiful sphere of cells, the whole no 
larger than the point of a pin. There are twelve thou- 
sand individuals, each with two protoplasmic lashes 
called cilia. The twenty-four thousand lashes all wave 
rhythmically, and the community rolls through the 
water with perfect unity of purpose, protoplasmic con- 
tact of individuals enabling the whole to move as one 
creature. Moreover, this confederacy owns common 
duties, and a true division of labor subserves the com- 
mon end. Some of the cells in partnership develop 
spermatozoids, others become oospheres, and, through 
the combination of the two, new colonies come into 
being. These baby volvoces are protected during ex- 
pansion within the hollow globe, until set free by the 
death of the parent colony. The older sphere rolls 
slowly across the field of the microscope, within it re- 
volving the spheres of the future, like the vision of the 
prophet, " a wheel within a wheel." Volvox is clearly 
swayed by protoplasmic unity, and that sway is psy- 
chic. 

9. Tissue plants only emphasize the same unity of 
plan and action, controlled by forces other than chem- 
ical and physical. And we no longer wonder over the 



MIND IN PLANTS. 19 

growth of a fern from spore to frond, or of a palm 
from cocoanut to plume, or of an oak from acorn to 
leafy crown. In all these cases one cell multiplies into 
many, and these come to exhibit, in an orderly way, 
the nicest specialization of parts and division of labor 
and concert of action, all on a plan foreordained in the 
fertilized ovum, and in every case peculiar ; and each 
form, thus highly organized, lives and dies as one per- 
son. Many tissue plants seem much less psychically 
active than those which are microscopic, but the psy- 
chic activity is only latent ; for during the period of 
fertilization both sperm and germ cells become amae- 
boid and assume a motory existence. Often the sperm 
cells are true spermatozoids, and not only very active, 
but with display of instinct. They respond to stimulus, 
and actively seek the germ cell of their own species, 
which they recognize and approach. It is known that 
the spermatozoids of ferns are attracted to the corre- 
sponding archegonia of the prothallus by malic acid, 
which is secreted in the latter to attract and guide 
them. Some tissue plants, however, are intensely 
psychic at all times. Some are exquisitely sensitive, 
like the well-known mimosa, and faint at a touch. 
These barely fail of a true nervous system, their pro- 
toplasm being almost as sensitive as nerve matter. 
Others are carnivorous and entrap animalcules, in- 
sects, etc., to consume them as food ; which is true of 
the bladderwort, pitcher plant, Venus's flytrap, sun- 
dew, and water pitcher. 

10. These results are secured somehow by the ac- 
tual contact of all the protoplasms combined. Minute 
filaments of living matter, through even thick walls of 
cellulose, connect not only neighboring cell plasms, 



20 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

but eveu the chromatin of neighboring nuclei. A net- 
work of living matter explains the harmony of plan 
and action. 

11. All tissue plants exhibit what is called geotro- 
pism — that is, their stems grow upward and their roots 
downward, or they somehow arrange themselves with 
reference to the force of gravity. Moreover, some 
runners and some rhizomes grow horizontally. Some 
flowers face and follow the sun. Some tendrils reach 
out for support and about it twine thernselves. Some 
plants sleep at night, allowing their tissues to become 
flaccid and to droop. All these movements have hith- 
erto been explained by the best botanists as mechanical. 
A closer study of the facts now casts doubt upon this 
far-fetched solution ; and Francis Darwin does not 
hesitate to ascribe plant movements, like those of ani- 
mals, to irritability aroused by stimulus. 



CHAPTER 11. 

MIND IK ANIMALS. 

1. In animals, protoplasm assumes more active 
habits, mind predominating over matter. The crea- 
ture on its entire periphery exhibits sensitiveness to 
stimulus and responds in appropriate action, showing 
feeling, volition, and judgment. It is active, and hence 
voracious; predatory, and hence ferocious. 

2. Animals of one cell, or protozoans, invariably put 
forth motory organs, as do plants in their motile states. 
In the rudest, these organs are extemporized out of the 
body substance — mere protrusions or false feet (pseudo- 



MIND IN ANIMALS. 21 

pods). In the higher they become quite permanent 
lashes {cilia) or whips {flagella). The lashes are short 
and delicate, and often form a light fringe. The whips 
are long and powerful. Both are composed of two 
united filaments of protoplasm, the one contractile and 
the other elastic. Hence they can bend and rebound. 
Of the whips there are two kinds, the one trailing be- 
hind, the other extending in advance. The forward 
whip is used, as a boy uses his right arm when swim- 
ming on his right side, to draw the body along. The 
hinder whip serves like a tadpole's tail, to propel. 
These members secure and guide the animal's move- 
ment when in search for food, or, by creating a vortex 
in the water, they bring in the food from a distance, 
while the creature remains still. 

3. Protozoans have the rudiments of senses. Thus 
all have the power of touch seemingly on the entire 
periphery. Probably also they have what is called 
" general sense." 

4. The light sense is well developed in some in- 
stances, localized in pigment spots, which give at least 
a perception of the distinction between light and dark- 
ness, sunshine and shadow. Euglena^ a pretty green 
infusory, has a pigment spot of bright red, which is 
sensitive to light and enables it to seek the sunbeam. 
As this is one of the chlorophyl animalcules with a 
vegetable habit, of course light is necessary to its ex- 
istence, and the organ of great practical value. 

5. Even the sense of hearing has been claimed, at 
least for one beautiful ciliated inf usory — Loxodes Ros- 
trum — which exhibits along the back a row of small 
organs supposed to be of the general nature of audi- 
tory sacs. 



22 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

6. They may or may not have smell and taste ; but 
the presumption is in favor of at least smell, in view 
of their skill in finding and selecting appropriate food. 
They certainly show in this regard likes and dislikes ; 
and then some are herbivorous and some carnivorous. 

7. That they have the rudiments of sensation and 
perception follows from the possession and use of 
senses. 

8. That they have the power of judgment on a low 
scale is also to be inferred from the purposive nature 
of their activity, and the instinct, experience and skill 
evinced in their methods of life — as in the pursuit of 
food ; some go in quest of it, some draw it to them 
by creating little vortices with their fringe of lashes. 
This is readily studied in the process of decomposition. 
After the bacteria and other simplest forms have caused 
extensive decay of the tissue, a creature appears on the 
scene armed with a long, rigid, anterior flagellum ter- 
minating in a hook, and a posterior flexible flagellum. 
It anchors itself by its trail and then successively coil- 
ing and uncoiling the flagellum, darts up and down on 
the decaying substance. This inf usory is succeeded by 
a group that hurl themselves on the putrid tissue and 
hammer it to bits. Finally, a gleaner appears and de- 
vours the scraps. Each form comes at the right time, 
recognizes the presence of appropriate nutriment, 
treats the food in a skillful manner, ingeniously sat- 
isfies its needs, and sustains life until changed con- 
ditions force out of existence everything but its dor- 
mant germs. 

9. Or take their methods of attack, as evincing not 
only thought but also volition and feeling. According 
to Stein, the Bodo Caudatus combines in companies 



MIND IN ANIMALS. 23 

of ten, twenty, forty, for purposes of attack. Like 
wolves, these little flagellates will throw themselves 
upon animalcules a hundred times larger, worry them, 
tear them to pieces and devour the huge prey piece- 
meal. Many hunter infusories are supplied with tri- 
chocysts, by means of which they wound, stun, and 
disable their quarry ; while other more peaceable ani- 
malcules are armed with the same weapons to be used 
only in defense. The trichocysts are sharp filaments, 
poisonous, like the stings of nettles, with which the 
parts adjacent to the mouth supply themselves by some 
internal method of manufacture. These serve as darts 
and are shot out by some simple mechanism with suf- 
ficient force to pierce. The attacked animal, wounded, 
is paralyzed, no longer tries to escape and is easily 
devoured. 

10. The protozoans are in some cases, as with Vor- 
ticella^ distinctly male and female, and these share in 
the usual psychic phenomena of sex. It is said they 
make love and indulge in coquetries, the male seeking 
and the female exercising choice. 

11. Communal instincts show themselves in the 
groupings of protozoans into colonies. Thus Vorti- 
cella may in the same genus occur with one species in 
separate individuals, and with another in a compound 
arrangement ; and in the compound arrangement there 
is not only individual but communal sensibility. 

12. Metazoans are protozoans complicated by de- 
velopment and evolution ; for every metazoan begins 
its life-history as a protozoan, and must have arisen in 
the combination of a number of single cells of com- 
mon ancestry. The simplest conceivable form of meta- 
zoan is that of a double sheet of cells rounded into a 



24 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

pouch. The inner cells become nutritive, the outer 
serve for sensation ; and the whole creature is a true 
federal union descended from one egg cell. From 
this simple scheme, by growth and specialization, all 
elaborations of animal shape and function are pos- 
sible. 

13. Protozoans show tendency in many genera to 
become metazoan. Thus in the genus Zodthamniurn^ 
while some species are mere colonies {simplex^ nutans)^ 
others are true federations {arbuscula^ alternans). 

14. The intelligence of metazoans is now so gener- 
ally admitted by scientists that we need not carry the 
argument further. Presuming that the psychic factor 
is here acknowledged, it seems important rather to ex- 
pend energy upon its elaborate methods of assertion. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE NEKYOUS SYSTEM. 

1. The growing complexity of metazoans, as we 
ascend the scale of animal existence, ere we proceed 
far, necessitates the specializing of certain cells to 
regulate the others. Protoplasmic unity of all the 
cells fails to meet the demands that arise for nice co- 
ordination and vigorous purposive action. The psychic 
factor itself, now that many individual cells are cum- 
bered with special functions, demands an organ. The 
little union has become so complex in its public duties 
and interrelations that there needs not only consensus 
and harmony, but authoritative government. 

2. For this, nerve cells are set apart. These, how- 



THE NEHYOUS SYSTEM. 25 

ever, seem to have no properties unpossessed by proto- 
plasm in general ; indeed, they are only commonplace 
individuals specialized to perform certain difficult 
functions — just as a president, a senator, or a gov- 
ernor is, after all, only an American citizen, in no wise 
different from farmers, traders and mechanics, except 
in the fact that he is set to govern all the rest. Nerve 
cells are of various shapes — spheroidal, ovoidal, trian- 
gular, etc., and have nucleus and nucleolus. 

3. In its rudest form the nerve cell has no attach- 
ment, and exerts a direct control over adjacent indi- 
viduals by mere protoplasmic contact, as in Hydra. 
In general, however, it exhibits processes— one, two, or 
many — which are called nerves, and themselves, prob- 
ably, are elongated cells end to end. 

4. At its simplest a nerve is a protoplasmic fibril 
and nothing more. In animals well innervated it be- 
comes a fiber, composed of many such fibrils, or it may 
be a bundle of such ^fibers. In the higher vertebrates, 
where dense masses of nerve cells and infinite com- 
plexity of interrelations require it, the fibers are often 
united in skeins and the skeins in cables. A vast 
number of fibers may be in one so-called nerve. 
Thus, in the motor nerve of the human tongue are 
full five thousand fibers and many hundreds of thou- 
sands of fibrils. In what we call the optic nerve — in 
reality an optic cable — are no less than one hundred 
thousand fibers and many millions of fibrils. 

5. In the vertebrates (except in the sympathetic 
system) nerves are insulated by two layers of non- 
conducting material up to near their terminations 
and are divided lengthwise by nodes somewhat like 
a cane or rattan stalk. All human nerves are supplied 

3 



26 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

with what seem to be re-enforcing cells — relay bat- 
teries — here and there along the line. 

6. The function of nerves is simply to convey im- 
pulses received either at the center or on the periphery. 
Hence they connect a nerve cell with another such 
cell or with an end organ. In passing through inter- 
mediary nerve cells the composing fibrils spread out 
from pole to pole against the inner surface of the cell 
wall, so as to inclose the cell protoplasm. Hence 
nerves are said to be efferent or afferent, according 
as they conduct energy from the centers to the periph- 
ery or the contrary. This division of labor is not 
based upon any essential difference in composition 
and it is likely that both kinds are able to convey im- 
pulses in either direction. 

7. The energy, like other forms of motion, is a 
transformation in this case of chemical affinity if from 
within, or of the impinging energy if from without. 
It is one motion converted into another, probably by 
the nerve cells, but become peculiar to itself, and quite 
different in physical properties from light, or heat, or 
electricity. 

In man a sensory impulse has been calculated to - 
travel at a speed of from one hundred to three hun- 
dred feet a second. Moreover, the number of im- 
pulses that may thus travel during one second is very 
great. By stimulation with the wires of a telephone, 
it has been shown by D' Arson ville that a nerve can 
transmit upward of five thousand vibrations per sec- 
ond, and that the wave-forms may be so perfect 
that the complex electrical waves produced in the 
telephone by the vowel sounds can be reproduced 
in the sound of a muscle after having been trans- 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 27 

lated into nerve vibrations and transmitted along a 
nerve. 

8. It is the nerve cell that stores up complex and 
unstable material derived from food, and by exploding 
this releases the needed energy. Morgan likens this 
complex material to a building of wooden blocks 
erected by a child, which, the more elaborate it be- 
comes, the more unstable it is, until a jar or a touch 
shatters the edifice, liberating the stored-up energy of 
position acquired by the blocks in building. We may 
also liken a nerve cell to a pistol loaded — a touch on 
the trigger discharges it. Or it is a galvanic battery, 
and the costly stored-up material is the zinc, to be con- 
sumed when the current is closed and the imprisoned 
energy is released. 

The shock may be very violent, as in the case of 
Sulla, who is said to have died of an explosion of wrath ; 
or of Leo X, who fell a victim to an outburst of joy. It 
has been ascertained that bee drones perish in the act 
of sexual intercourse, slain by the shock of passion, 
and not, as formerly asserted, by ruthless action of the 
queen. 

9. A nervous system is a series of two or more 
nerve cells with appropriate connections ; it may be 
very simple or it may be very intricate. A typical sys- 
tem is a solitary psychic cell connected by two proto- 
plasmic filaments with a sensory and with a motor 
surface, but any variation on this is possible. 

As nerve systems become elaborate, they them- 
selves need eentral control, hence centers simply for 
co-ordination of such centers; these may be termed 
co-ordinating organs. 

10. Nerve cells are capable of three kinds of action : 



28 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

(1) Automatic. The word explains itself, and a 
good illustration will be found in the cells that control 
the beating of the heart. A frog's heart after excision 
will yet throb some time, because the ganglia that con- 
trol the action accompany it. 

(2) Keflex — that is, in response to stimulus come 
in on some nerve. A pinch of snuff, and the resulting 
sneeze, will serve for illustration. 

(3) Inhibitory. Where one nerve cell prevents or 
restrains action in another. Stimulate the vagus, and 
the action of the heart is arrested. Atropine paralyzes 
this inhibitory influence, muscarine stimulates it. If 
from any cause the smaller arterial vessels become con- 
stricted, and the heart in forcing blood through them 
be required to work with greater effort, and so in dan- 
ger of exhaustion, the depressor which connects the 
heart with the vasomotor center inhibits or depresses 
this center and obliges it to dilate the vessels, and so 
remove the cause of the embarrassment. 

The entire nervous system is such a marvel of com- 
plex harmony, capable of intelligent supervision of its 
own operations at every point. 

11. Four laws govern the action of nerve cells and 
systems : 

(1) Of specialization— that is, of specific function 
for every element. Of course, in simple forms, the 
function may be much more general than in the more 
complex. The law becomes more and more emphatic 
as we ascend the scale, until in man specialization is 
carried to the extreme. 

(2) The law of habit. Energy here, as everywhere, 
follows the lines of least resistance. Psychic action 
carves out physical channels in the process of time 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 29 

and flows in them as a matter of course. As Carpen- 
ter puts it, the nerve system " grows to " the modes 
in which it has been exercised ; or, to vary the iUustra- 
tion, nerve matter, like paper, folds most easily in the 
old wrinkles. Indeed, it is claimed by evolutionists 
that nerve fibrils owe their origin, in the gradual de- 
velopment of systems, to this very law ; lines of motion 
following paths of least resistance occasion neural 
trails. The trails become fibrils or filaments of cells 
end to end, specialized as neural highways. 

(3) The law of duration. Nerve reactions are far 
from instantaneous, and can easily be measured. It 
takes time for a stimulus at the periphery to reach the 
center, time for the center to receive the impulse and 
to respond, time for an execution of the motory result. 
The moment elapsing between a stimulus and its result 
is called " reaction time," and is different for different 
individuals and for differing moods of the same indi- 
vidual. Much labor has been put forth in its careful 
estimation, especially in Germany ; but the results so 
far have been disappointing in the matter of important 
discovery. 

(4) Conservation of energy. The nerve systems 
exert no force not derived ; their motions are previous 
motions converted. Their explosions are exhaustive 
and their wasted energies must be redintegrated. 
Hence all complicated centers are abundantly sup- 
plied with nutriment. The brain, during action, is 
suffused with nourishing blood. The. immediate con- 
comitant of an effort at hard thought or intense feel- 
ing, or vigorous willing, is a rush of blood to the 
ganglia in use ; and so if one be hungry, weary, or 
anaemic, the effort is likely to prove feeble. Centers 



30 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

can not generate force of themselves, but can only use 
such energy as the nutritive apparatus supplies. Hence, 
for vigorous psychosis, the need for substantial food 
well digested. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

A SURVEY OF NEKYE SYSTEMS 11^ THE ORDER OF 
COMPLEXITY. 

1. Protozoans, as we have seen,- have no nerve 
systems, but their single cell is itself the prototype of 
the nerve cell, possessing, at least in germ, all the 
qualities of automatic and sensitive life which the 
latter attains. 

2. The first appearance of cells specialized for sen- 
sory-motor control is found in Hydra^ one of the sim- 
plest of the metazoans, which is yet complex enough 
to require central control ; it has nutritive, sensitive, 
combative and generative cells, and in addition a few 
psychic ; these however without processes. Hydra- 
form metazoans go no further on this line of evolution. 

3. Medusaform metazoans, which are simply an 
elaboration of the hydraform, develop a more exten- 
sive nerve apparatus. Thus the medusae of Bougain- 
villia present a central and a peripheral system, the 
former a double ring of nerye cells, the latter scattered 
nerve cells, and both connected with pigment spots, 
muscle fibers and sensitive ectoderm by filaments. 
The higher medusae perfect this simple arrangement 
and add olfactory tracts to rude eyes (or ears). Cut a 
hydra into bits and each part will restore a whole 
creature. The specialization is not complete enough 



NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OF COMPLEXITY. 31 

to cripple the generative and formative independence 
of each cell. But if you slice off the nerve ring of a 
medusa, what remains of the animal is thereby para- 
lyzed, and will soon die. Specialization cripples cell 
independence and though reflex action on stimulation 
of peripheral centres occurs, automatism ceases. 

4. The next higher order of radiated metazoans 
(the Actinozoa) improve somewhat on medusaform. 
Coral polyps, sea-pens, anemones and the like possess 
in some cases rudimentary eyes and ears, with corre- 
sponding co-ordinative organs, but with similar lim- 
itations. 

5. The Ecliinodermata — sea urchins, starfishes, 
crinoids, etc. — also group the nerve centers in a ring 
about the mouth. There are ganglia for each ray, 
connected together by filaments, and from each gan- 
glion there are radiating nerves. Thus the creature has 
as many little brains as rays ; these, however, though 
acting in concert, must not be conceived of as entirely 
dependent. Cut out one segment of a starfish and it 
will thrive very well, under its own local control. The 
brains are harmonized, but not co-ordinated by any su- 
preme center. Hence the radiated animals have not 
attained any very high grade of intelligence. 

6. A more hopeful plan has proved that of the ar- 
ticulated animals, whose bodies are made up of seg- 
ments — worms, centipeds, etc. ; each segment is like 
the previous one and each has a very simple nerve 
system connected with all the others by double fila- 
ments. The chain of cells is ventral, and a pair of 
ganglia for each segment. Here the system is of the 
simplest, but it is reduplicated. And now we are in 
the line of royal succession. 



32 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

7. An improvement on this appears in certain of 
those worms which have cephalic ganglia, the twin 
nerves rising and dividing to allow the oesophagus to 
pass through, and ending above in one or more highly- 
psychic cells. In this arrangement segments are still 
independently active. Cut off the head of a centiped 
while walking, and its body will continue to move on- 
ward ; cut the body into three or four parts, and the 
same result will obtain. Let the headless end strike 
an insurmountable obstacle and, while of course the 
motion ceases, the legs will continue to strive in 
attempted propulsion. The cephalic ganglia supply- 
only needed general direction ; when the other nerve 
centers are destroyed, these fail of instruction from 
headquarters and are like a company of soldiers in 
battle whose officers have been killed. 

8. Among the insects this scheme becomes much 
more elaborate, and the cephalic ganglia much more 
numerous and complicated, with an immense stride in 
psychic energy. Thus the ants possess a real brain, 
large in proportion to their size and bearing some 
faint resemblance to that of the vertebrates ; and they 
seem to have carried the type they represent to nearly 
its full ideal development. Still, we are hardly pre- 
pared by the visible anatomy of an ant's head for the 
astounding unfoldings of mind manifest in its life's 
history. Sir John Lubbock, who has made a lifelong 
study of these insects, declares that they rank in intel- 
ligence next to man. He has discovered that they 
possess character, and are some timid and some bold, 
some born to lead and some to follow, some thievish, 
some greedy, some phlegmatic. If they fail of a lan- 
guage, they at least transfer intelligence readily by 



NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OF COMPLEXITY. 33 

crossing antennae. This has enabled the organization 
of quite complicated social systems, with the virtues 
of public spirit, neighborliness and patriotism carried 
to the utmost limit of personal abandon. In some 
species distinct classes have evolved — warriors, work- 
ers and slaves. Communal industries flourish ; many 
kinds keep aphides and regularly "milk" them for 
their honey ; Lasius flavus preserves in its nest dur- 
ing the winter eggs of these lice, hatches out young 
by a sort of incubator process, and in the spring 
stocks appropriate trees with them, quite as men breed 
cattle, stall them and then send them out to pasture. 
In western Texas, Myrinica tarlata clears a tract of 
ground about four feet square around its city, and from 
this garden spot all plants are rooted up, and all stones 
and rubbish removed ; a variety of millet is now sown, 
weeds that spring up extirpated and marauding insects 
warned off; when mature, the crop is reaped and 
stored away in granaries within the nest, for winter 
consumption. The parasol or leaf-cutting ants of 
Trinidad plant a fungus garden and nourish them- 
selves on the proceeds of their labor. Many species 
keep slaves, who do all the hard and dirty work ; 
these are seized in their homes, in the larva or pupa 
form, during great forays and often amid bloody bat- 
tle, and are brought in the jaws of their captors to 
their new abodes, where they are taught to serve and 
wait ; and there are good and there are bad masters. 
The foraging ants of South America make incursions, 
sometimes in dense Macedonian phalanx, sometimes 
in light detached columns ; they send out scouts, sur- 
vey routes, convey to one another information and 
form camps, quite as though human beings ; every few 



34 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

days they arrange new camps, like the cruel robbers 
they are, move to and fro over the country, according 
to the exigencies of their predatory existence. The 
ingenuity exercised by these formidable barbarians in 
overcoming obstacles encountered on the march is 
said to be astounding. Thus, in crossing a crumbling 
slope, which was gradually disintegrating under the 
passage of the army, a portion of the band, by adher- 
ing to each other, formed a solid pathway over which 
the others passed safely ; a twig formed a bridge 
across a small rill, but this proving insufficient for 
the transit of the host, it was widened by ants clinging 
to each side of the twig. 

There seems no end to these wonders, nor any 
good reason for not comparing such intelligence favor- 
ably with that of the Australian bushmen, the Ved- 
dahs of Ceylon, or the pygmies found by Stanley in 
the African forests. From the psychological stand- 
point these facts are to the highest degree significant. 

9. The nerve system of articulated animals is im- 
proved upon by a fusion of the chain of ganglia into 
a continuous mass or " cord." This appears in the 
lowest of the vertebrates, and is supported by a flexible 
fibro-vascular rod called a notochord. Amphioxus, a 
stupid, senseless little creature, and certain genera of 
fishes, are so equipped ; and the embryos of all higher 
vertebrates pass through this notochord stage. But the 
latter in time develop a true vertebral column embrac- 
ing in its bony canal the spinal cord. 

10. The spinal cord is found to enlarge at points 
where its resources are severely taxed by limbs or sen- 
sory organs. In AmpMoxus^ which has no limbs, and 
few if any sense organs, and the lowest fishes with 



NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OP COMPLEXITY. 35 

cartilaginous skeletons and a uniform wormlike body, 
the cord presents the same general appearance at every 
point ; but in fishes endowed with powerful fins and 
some intelligence there are corresponding local en- 
largements. These great and continuous bodies of 
nerve matter are unaccompanied by much psychic 
energy, as they serve simply to co-ordinate correspond- 
ingly large masses of end organ and muscle. 

11. The enlargement of the cephalic portion of the 
cord first in fishes produces a true brain. A brain is 
thus a cephalic collection of specialized ganglia ; its 
appearance signalizes the presence of energetic psychic 
activity. In its lowest forms a brain is composed of 
very simple sensory and motor ganglia, and the verte- 
brate so endowed is far below bees and ants. As ce- 
phalic ganglia become complicated, they themselves 
need co-ordination — hence centers for brain co-ordi- 
nation. Over the sensoriumf rises a cerebellum, and 
over that a cerebrum. 

12. In all but the lowest of the fishes we have a 
distinctly marked cerebellum, double optic and olfac- 
tory lobes, with two diminutive cerebral hemispheres. 
The development of the cerebrum now significantly 
marks the progress of intelligence. In Amphibia the 
hemispheres are relatively larger than in fishes. In 
reptiles they push backward, in birds both forward 
and backward. Anterior lobes of the cerebrum only 
are found in egg-laying vertebrates. First in placen- 
tal mammals appears that great body of connecting 
fibers uniting the hemispheres and called the corpus 
callosum. Eodents give us the earliest indication of 
middle lobes distinct from the anterior. Monkeys 
develop posterior lobes, and these the anthropoid apes 



36 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

emphasize. Only in the more elaborate mammals do 
these fold in and form convolutions ; the hemispheres 
now divided and convoluted quite cover the cerebellum 
and the medulla, and a forehead occasioned by en- 
larged masses of ganglia may be perceived. At last v/e 
have the human brain with a cerebrum whose cortex 
is folded into fissures and crevasses, until its surface is 
doubled, and with correlated ganglia aggregating full 
six hundred million nerve cells, and probably a much 
larger number of nerve fibers. 



CHAPTEE V. 

GEN^ERAL REFLECTIONS UPON" THE PSYCHIC FACTOR 
COMPARATIVELY VIEWED. 

1. LiYiisra matter can always be described in lan- 
guage of mind. 

2. The ascent — from simple to complex — is marked 
by an ever-increasing specialization of cells for psychic 
functions, enlarged function in general indicated by 
enlarged ganglia. Animals that depend much upon 
vision are sure to display extensive optic lobes, those 
living by scent great olfactory tracts. Birds that use 
wings for flight, in the corresponding vertebral gan- 
glia show significant increase in size, while those that 
depend exclusively upon the legs for locomotion indi- 
cate this by the swelling of the spinal cord lower 
down. 

3. As a rule, the more nerve centers the more men- 
tal functions. Each specialization means a corre- 
sponding dexterity in the psychic factor. Co-ordi- 



GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 37 

nating lobes counterbalance diversity and restore per- 
sonal unity to organisms that would be otherwise 
overspecialized ; hence these indicate high intelli- 
gence. 

4. It must be remembered, however, that increase in 
the size of ganglia may be owing to mere enlargement 
of bulk ; in this case massiveness is not significant. 
Both the elephant and the whale in brain weight ex- 
cel man ; but this size is only the correlative of bodily 
bigness. It is the relative weight of nerve matter that 
signifies. 

5. And even the relative weight is deceptive, with- 
out regard to quality. Many apes possess more brain 
than man in proportion to avoirdupois, the difference 
being in quality. The brain of the ant is, as we have 
seen, an instance of the remarkable possibilities of 
even minute particles of nerve matter. We may safe- 
ly say that the amount, complexity and quality of 
mind, in a general way, correspond with the amount, 
complexity and quality of nerve matter. It is sound 
psychology to speak of a " brainy man," and Henry 
Ward Beecher was right when he declared that the 
world had always been swayed by men of '* big heads 
and big bellies." 

6. Added ganglia often re-enforce those previously 
existing, by contributing higher potentialities. At 
least four or five of the basal lobes of the human brain 
are united in the work of co-ordinating muscular 
movements with sensation. All the great nerves of 
sense spring from two or more roots, imbedded often 
in quite different soils; thus the optic nerve arises by 
different roots from the optic thalamus, corpora quad- 
rigemina and geniculata, to say nothing of adventi- 



38 THE PSYCHIC FACTOE. 

tious roots connecting one tract with the other. This 
means that the apparatus for innervating eyes in the 
lower animals, in the higher is re-enforced with new 
potentialities. It is very clear that eyes, ears, etc., 
are far more varied in endowment with mammals 
than with articulates, radiates and mollusks. 

7. Nerve masses which were once centers of con- 
sciousness, as more elaborate organs appear, work au- 
tomatically or in a merely reflex activity. A7nphioxus 
does all its thinking with its spinal cord ; but verte- 
brates that have risen to the dignity of a brain, use 
the spinal cord only for reflex, conductory, and auto- 
matic work. Consciousness with each step upward 
becomes more comprehensive and intense, rising to 
higher outlooks upon the universe and more subtle 
and complex intellection, but seemingly withdrawing 
itself from regulation of the lowly functions of mere 
bodily existence, which fall to the realm of all but the 
highest centers. 

AVe may in ourselves observe this withdrawal in 
constant operation. We learn in childhood to walk, 
with much painful education of reluctant nerve cen- 
ters ; but in boyhood already walking has ceased to be 
a matter of conscious regulation. One is taught to 
ride a bicycle with many woful episodes of inexpe- 
rience, as a necessary concomitant of the intensely 
conscious process ; in time the bicycle becomes part of 
the rider, and he now recognizes passing friends, en- 
joys the scenery and muses undisturbed as he skims 
along. The same is true of reading, singing, piano- 
playing, and even of preaching and praying ; the cen- 
ters run themselves. In these cases consciousness has 
by no means withdrawn wholly, but it evidently tends 



GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 39 

to do so ; give it ages of evolution, and it might do so 
entirely. 

8. This withdrawal in no wise interferes with the 
automatic and reflex performance of duty on the part 
of lower centers. We have seen that to cut off a 
centiped's head does no more than remove control ; 
the after ganglia operate normally. A frog from 
whom the cerebral lobes have been removed will swim, 
leap, crawl and croak ; it is sensitive to light, but is 
stupid and listless, its life but a dream. Even a 
rabbit so operated on will stand, run and leap, start, 
tremble, cry if pinched and seek the light ; but it is 
torpid, its consciousness that of sleep. A bird thus 
maimed will pick up food, drink, fly, clean its feathers, 
avoid obstacles and start at sharp sounds or flashes of 
light, but is dull and sleepy ; nay, it is asleep, only 
the lower ganglia present and active. 

Human beings have in many instances lost large 
masses of brain matter without serious impairment of 
faculties. Lallemand narrates the case of a person 
of average intelligence in whose cerebrum the right 
hemisphere was found after death to have been filled 
with only a serous fluid. Bo3^er tells of an epileptic 
child of usual brightness whose entire temporal lobe 
on the left side was found to have been destroyed. A 
premature discharge of blasting powder on a certain 
occasion sent a crowbar through the head of a young 
American ; entering at the left angle of the jaw and 
passing through the top of the head, it was picked up 
some distance off smeared with blood and brains. The 
stunned youth recovered in a few minutes, ascended a 
flight of stairs, gave an intelligible account of the loss 
to a surgeon and continued to live for over twelve 



40 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

years, with no impairment of his sensory or motory 
powers. Human infants born without other brain 
than the medulla have been known to live for hours, 
crying and sucking. 

9. Ganglia may act vicariously. When a nerve 
center is destroyed a neighboring center often can and 
sometimes does assume its role ; for it must be remem- 
bered that nerve cells, after all, are only protoplasmic 
elements specialized, and that they preserve somewhat 
of the power of general adaptation to environment and 
stimulus. Just as a factory hand, who all his life has 
devoted himself to some one little operation in the 
making of shoes, watches or sewing machines, yet can, 
if necessary — though doubtless crippled by such mo- 
notonous activity — do many other things. 

10. The evolution of mind displays a marvelous 
unity in diversity. At the beginning of the individual 
life, and at bottom of the psychic scale, we have 
nothing greater than the living cell ; and at the end 
of the individual life and at the top of the psychic 
scale, there is nothing greater than the living cell ; 
there is no break in unity, and only growing diversity 
with three great leaps. 

The three leaps are: (1) The appearance of pro- 
toplasm in form of cells. This made structure possi- 
ble. (2) The specializing of cells. This made func- 
tion possible. (3) The co-ordinating of functions. 
This made all degrees of mental attainment possible. 

11. Mark the progress in its results. First single 
cells with a psychic factor and conscious of their own 
simple activities ; then colonies of such cells pervaded 
by a fellow - feeling ; then communities, federally 
united and with a communal consciousness, the indi- 



GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 41 

vidual cell-mind now tending to work automatically ; 
then communities in which some cells are set apart to 
feel, think and will for all the rest — in short, with 
nothing less than veritable government. Individual 
cells with the rise are more and more automatic, and 
their consciousness retreats into the background. The 
final outcome and greatest triumph of Nature is in the 
evolution of large masses of nerve matter for very 
elaborate psychosis, with consciousness covering the 
play of only the highest centers, the lower groups 
acting automatically. 

Crowning the whole, man ! 

12. We have no evidence that Nature's reservoir is 
exhausted in man, even on the lines of neural de- 
velopment. Who knows what further possibilities of 
brain development and complexity may not exist? 
Who shall say what future evolution may not do for 
man's present brain ? Who can tell what other and 
better endowed creatures may not somewhere, or even 
here, arise ? 



SECTION II. 

€OI^SCIOUSNESS. 



CHAPTER VL 

CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL. 

1. Consciousness is an ultimate fact, and there- 
fore does not admit of definition. Every one knows 
what it is until asked to tell. It is not a mere name 
for a series of mental states, for these suppose its pres- 
ence ; it is not any particular psychic operation, be- 
cause it reviews all psychic operations. It is a recog- 
nition by mind of its mental states, an awareness of 
what is going on within, and thus mentality in its last 
analysis. 

2. The organ of consciousness is primarily living 
matter. There seems no good reason for denying even 
to the lowest forms of life some at least dim and shad- 
owy awareness of their psychic acts. All that we have 
thus far said emphasizes the juvstice of this claim. 
When nerve centers appeared, these doubtless func- 
tioned as the exclusive organs of consciousness, which 
had withdrawn from commonplace cells ; and when 
nerve systems were organized, the last-formed became 
the seats of conscious existence. In man the organ of 
consciousness, with the greatest probability and accord- 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL. 43 

ing to nearly all competent thinkers, is the cortex of 
the cerebrum. 

3. The basic fact of consciousness is change. Pos- 
sibly without change we might have knowledge, but we 
should hardly be aware that we knew : consciousness 
would become nirvana^ and practically extinct. The 
awareness is at least kept alert by change, and in all 
conscious life change is incessant. 

Moreover, change has a physiological necessity; 
for, as our nerve centers are constructed, action always 
involves exhaustion, and persistent use destruction. 
Healthful activity of the brain constantly shifts the 
burden from cell to cell, from one center to another. 
Kibot, describing the tumultuous stream of thought, 
calls it "an irradiation in various directions and 
through various strata — a mobile aggregate, which is 
being incessantly formed, unformed, and reformed." 

4. Hence, consciousness involves a time considera- 
tion. It is a constant noiv. It is aware of memories, 
but not of those past occurrences and operations them- 
selves which are remembered ; it is aware of anticipa- 
tions, but not of those future occurrences and opera- 
tions themselves which are impending; it is aware 
only of present mental states. 

The noio of consciousness is not a point but a period 
of time — very brief, but of sensible duration, with a 
fading indistinctness beiiind and a brightening indis- 
tinctness before. The length of this period varies 
from six to twelve seconds. 

5. Consciousness involves a discrimination between 
an ego, or self, and a non-ego, or not-self — that is, be- 
tween a conscious subject and an object of which the 
subject is aware. This has been denied, on the ground 



44 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

that babes are not supposed to make any such discrim- 
ination, and that they discover the self after a while. 
The .objection, however, is only a surmise, and not an 
overvvise one. There seems no good reason to deny 
that an infant, even at birth, may have an awareness 
of itself at least dim and empty enough to correspond 
with the void and shadowy nature of its consciousness 
at that time. It would not be in keeping with our 
purpose to dwell upon the idea of self in a metaphys- 
ical spirit, and it is here simply postulated without 
speculation as another of our ultimates, incapable in 
its last analysis of definition. 

When consciousness is busy with its own states, 
viewing them as its own, we name the operation self- 
consciousness. 

6. Consciousness has two functions of supreme im- 
portance — attention, and the enchaining or grouping of 
mental states. Without these wonderful gifts the so- 
called faculties would each one be quite useless. The 
first of these two functions is consciousness intensely 
aware, and the other is consciousness aware of the re- 
lation between its objects. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ATTEKTIOK. 



1. Atte:n'tiok is a temporary arrest of psychic 
change, a fixation of consciousness. If we picture 
the latter as the mind's eye, the former will be the 
" yellow spot " of clearest vision. 

2. The compass of attention is not large, or, in 



ATTENTION. 45 

other words, the yellow spot of consciousness is small, 
like that of the eye. According to Wundt, there may 
be four or five visual simultaneous impressions — lines, 
letters, or numbers. If successive, and with the most 
favorable interval of two or three tenths of a second, 
sixteen simple and eight double impressions are pos- 
sible. If successive sounds be rhythmical and in 
groups, the largest possible number of impressions 
attended to at once is forty, if divided into five groups 
not more than three tenths of a second apart. Wundt 
fixes the extreme possible duration of any act of atten- 
tion at from two and a half to four seconds. 

3. The physiological condition of attention is a 
rush of blood to the nerve centers involved and the 
strong innervation of the end organs or of the muscles 
used. This is so because the centers are strained to the 
uttermost, and require quick, continuous and ample 
nutrition. Thus, in looking attentively at anything, 
the various ganglia in which the optic nerve is rooted 
are richly supplied with blood, and the end organs 
of vision and the eye muscles are vigorously inner- 
vated. 

4. Attention is spontaneous or voluntary — you 
may be made aware or you may make yourself aware. 
It is either sensorial or reflective, directed to what is 
without or to what is within. 

5. If spontaneous, it is caused by emotional states: 
we attend to this or that because for some reason we 
want to and are attracted. Hence, spontaneous atten- 
tion reveals character ; the things apperceived betray 
the quality and working of our emotional natures. 

Surprise is such a fixation of consciousness of high 
intensity. We speak of a person's being rooted to the 



46 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

spot, chained, fascinated, etc. As Plato tell ns in his 
Theaetetus, " Philosophy begins in wonder " — that is, 
in a spontaneous but very vigorous observance of phe- 
nomena. 

6. Voluntary attention is the result of education, a 
cause and an effect of civilization, a sociological phe- 
nomenon. Eibot suggests that it originated in wom- 
an, through her cruel necessity of doing unattractive 
work ; thus she first won the gift of application. And 
Eibot is certainly correct in describing three stages 
from infancy to manhood : 

(1) In childhood such attention is secured by 
means of education, acting only upon the. simple feel- 
ings — love, fear, desire of reward, shame, etc. 

(2) Later it is aroused and maintained by appeal 
to feelings of secondary formation, as love of self, am- 
bition, emulation, etc. 

(3) Still later, organization comes in and volun- 
tary attention becomes a matter of habit. 

7. A measure of solitude securing freedom from 
disturbance becomes the necessity of the intense 
thinker or observer. Mohammed must go into the 
mountains above Mecca, Paul sojourn in Arabia, 
Dante haunt the woods of Fonte Avellana, and Schiller 
roam by brook and glade, while Cervantes does his 
best work in prison. 

Voluntary attention through long habit may ac- 
quire the absorption of absent-mindedness. Archi- 
medes would forget to eat his meals, and only com- 
pulsion forced him to the bath ; he lost his life in such 
a fit of abstraction, at the hands of a Eoman soldier 
to whom he was too absorbed to return the answer 
that would have saved him. Sir Isaac Newton would 



ENCHAINING AND GROUPINa FUNCTION. 47 

"sit, half dressed, on his bed for many hours of the 
day, when composing the Principia. 

8. Intensify the attraction and so the consequent 
absorption, and we have the condition called rapture 
and ecstasy. Socrates was liable to fits of abstraction 
so complete that it was impossible to arouse him until 
attention voluntarily withdrew itself. Once in the 
camp at Potidaea he stood twenty-four hours in the 
sunshine and in the dew, motionless. The prophet 
Ezra sat crouching in the court of the temple from 
morning until night in an ecstasy of horror. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ENCHAINING AND GROUPING FUNCTION OF 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

1. Mental states are recognized as coming and 
going in chains and groups. Think of Lamarck and 
Darwin comes into view ; picture Adam and Eve 
promptly appears, apple in hand; hear the hum of 
bees and you smack your lips for honey; see a cow 
and you long for cream ; say " one," and " two," 
" three," " four " come crowding on ; hum a theme 
and an entire symphony seems to swell upon the ear ; 
and so on ad infinitum, 

2. There are seeming exceptions. Often mental' 
states succeed each other without break or outside 
suggestion that are not apparently related. You 
smell an odor of jasmine and think of Mount Desert, 
but perceive no connection. But if you will allow 
your mind to dwell upon the matter, the search will 



48 THE PSYCHIC FACTOK. 

probably be rewarded by the coming up into view of 
certain submerged links in the chain, whose absence 
caused the apparent break. Then all is plain : the 
jasmine perfumed the handkerchief of the young lady 
from Boston, and the fabric of lace — borne by you on 
the winds from the passing yacht— you gallantly res- 
cued from the waters of Bar Harbor. 

3. The laws of this enchaining and grouping are 
not far to seek, if by laws we mean only a classifica- 
tion of the kinds of chains and groups. As these 
kinds are merely the conceivable relations of things- 
spatial, temporal and logical — we may, if we please, ex- 
ercise much ingenuity in classifying. Usually philos- 
ophers have arranged them under a few captions, 
thus : 

Contiguity Horse and rider. 

Contrast Light and dark. 

Resemblance Grant and Sheridan. 

Succession Quoted words. 

Cause and effect Vice and misery. 

Whole and parts United States and New York. 

Genus and species Dog and greyhound. 

Sign and thing signified . . Cross and Catholic faith. 

4. Sir William Hamilton has reduced these to two, 
simultaneity (in time and space) and affinity, the 
latter including every kind of logical relation. Then, 
following St. Augustine, he compressed these two into 
one, which he named redintegration, and which may 
be stated thus : " Those mental states suggest one an- 
other which have at some previous time formed parts 
of one mental state." Contiguous and successive 
states associate themselves because at some time joined 
in consciousness ; and logical relations provoke associ- 



ENCHAINING AND GROUPING FUNCTION. 49 

ation because the mind has perceived such relations 
and grouped together things thus naturally in affinity. 
When a new fact is cognized, we note its surroundings, 
antecedents and consequents, and we perceive or study 
up its relations and then place it in its own classes ; 
and henceforth it is likely to call out or to be called 
out by any member of these classes. Vice does not 
suggest misery until we discover that the one is a 
cause and the other an effect ; henceforth, associated 
by this mental act, either may call up the other. 

What, however, shall we say of the quick association 
of new facts with mental states — that they never could 
have met in consciousness ? For instance, you are in- 
troduced to a Mrs. Irving Booth, and soon find your- 
self repeating the name of the distinguished Salva- 
tionist, Mrs. Ballington Booth, though the two have 
never been in thought together before. The solu- 
tion is simple. The name Booth has many times 
formed part of the whole thought Ballington Booth, 
and it is that name recalls the Ballington. Hence- 
forth Ballington and Irving, hereby associated, will 
be able to suggest one another without aid of the 
surname. 

All new objects of thought must contain some 
quality or condition, already in some class of memo- 
rized qualities and conditions, and it is by these and 
their associations that what is absolutely new is joined 
to what is old. 

5. But in the infinity of possible concurrences what 
is it that determines the appearance of states actually 
restored ? Why, when I recall the song at last night's 
concert, do I think of the singer rather than of the 
programme, or of the programme rather than of the 



50 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

audience, or of this or that, out of a thousand possible 
restorations ? It depends upon — 

(1) Habit. Familiar combinations are wrinkled 
into the nerve structure and tend of themselves to 
recur. Frequency of recurrence in thought, for the 
wonted notion, establishes lines of least resistance, 
neural highways easily traversed. 

(2) Kecentness. Poems, orations, series of facts, 
readily restore themselves, if but recently committed, 
even to the scholar of mediocre memory. Not only 
frequent but recent recurrence is essential to restore 
them. 

(3) Vividness. This is of value because of the 
deep cutting in of the record on the neural tablet. 
Moreover, vivid mental states not only leave a more 
enduring record ; by their very intensity they associate 
themselves with a larger range and variety of other 
mental states. 

(4) Interruption. Which may interpose sensations 
powerful enough not only to start new chains and 
form new centers of circling ripples, but also to force 
out of consciousness states already found in possession. 
Conversation is a perpetual disturbance of the asso- 
ciated flow of thought, a continual throwing of stones 
upon the already disturbed surface. Every remark, 
question, or gesture of a companion starts new rip- 
plings and establishes condensing centers for related 
ideas. 

(5) Voluntary preference ; whereby the will sum- 
m.ons, retires, combines, disassociates and recombines 
the mental states. 

6. The briefest association time on record (known 
to the author) is -341 of a second. A simple method 



THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 51 

of handling this problem is to read aloud as rapidly 
as possible. Every word sounded is an act of associa- 
tion ; as so many are uttered in a minute, divide sixty 
seconds by this number, and from the result subtract 
the perception time and the interval of utterance. 

7. The relations of things being very numerous, 
the possibilities are countless. General Grant, for 
instance, is classed with mankind, with men, with 
Americans, with great generals, with Presidents, etc. ; 
he succeeded Johnson and preceded Garfield ; he was 
a cause and an effect ; in reticence he was like William 
the Silent, in temperament he contrasted Washington ! 
he was part of his army, part of his family, etc. The 
number of mental states which the name of Grant may 
revive is thus practically countless. 



tlHAPTER IX. 

THE GE^-ERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 

1. Mek'tal states may be classified as initiative, 
habitual or instinctive ; and all living matter may be 
said to be capable of exhibiting these three phases of 
mind. 

2. Mind is initiative when its operations are, for 
the creature in question, novel ; and that even the 
lowest forms can entertain novel psychoses is now be- 
yond reasonable denial. It is shown in the capacity 
to learn, as displayed by all animals and not impos- 
sible to plants. Protoplasm, as has already been re- 
marked, can be educated. Even bees and ants, though 
in popular estimate the very incarnation of routine. 



52 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

have not yet passed beyond the point when their young 
need to be trained by their elders in knowledge of life. 
An ant of the slave species, if captured when a pupa, 
will grow up in the captor's hill in perfect ignorance 
of its kindred, will fight them if necessary and will 
learn obedience in humility. Young ants or bees all 
receive a certain schooling in the hill or hive. The 
same mental initiative appears in the shrewd devisings 
of various creatures to control novel circumstances, 
as narrated in countless trustworthy anecdotes. Com- 
mander E. H. Napier describes the feeding of a num- 
ber of pigeons upon a few oats accidentally let fall by 
a cartman while fixing the nosebag on a horse stand- 
ing at bait; all the grain at hand having been de- 
voured, one of the birds arose, and, flapping its wings 
furiously, darted at the horse's eyes. The startled 
animal tossed his head and in so doing shook out more 
kernels. This proceeding was repeated whenever the 
pigeons had exhausted their supply. Another witness 
tells of two swallows who built a nest in the veranda 
of a house in Victoria ; as the nest leaned upon a bell 
wire, it was frequently disturbed and twice pulled down. 
The pair then began afresh, making a tunnel through 
the lower part of the nest, around the bell wire ; and 
they were annoyed no more. 

3. This initiative, however, tends to become habit- 
ual, because of the neural law of habit ; in accordance 
with which nerve elements can adapt themselves to pe- 
culiar functions, repeated performance develops facil- 
ity and a nerve system " grows to " the modes in which 
it is exercised. Hence the possibility and the tenacity 
of personal habit. Shakespeare has observed, " How 
use doth breed a habit in a man ! " and long before his 



THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 53 

day Ovid wrote of evil ways and lie might have said it 
of the paths of peace : 

" 111 habits gather by unseen degrees, 
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." 

4. The early result of frequent repetition of any 
act is a simplification of the necessary movements. 
Habit finds the lines of least resistance, and these be- 
come trodden paths ; and hence the work is done with 
increasing directness, accuracy and ease. Gradually 
the act tends to become reflex or automatic, and the 
conscious self is less and less troubled with care of its 
supervision. When we first learn to play on a musical 
instrument, to skate, to swim, to ride a bicycle or to per- 
form some other dexterous combination of activities, 
we find it necessary to regard every particular move- 
ment, and even then are clumsy and soon wearied ; 
ere long, however, all these things are done without 
awkwardness, fatigue or even conscious attention, the 
trained nerve centers working satisfactorily under only 
general supervision. Huxley tells of a practical joker, 
who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his 
dinner, suddenly called out, " Attention ! " The man 
instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton 
and potatoes in the gutter. 

This law guarantees mental evolution and ren- 
ders possible complex mental operations. Well says 
James, " Habit is the fly-wheel of society," and we may 
add, it is the condition of progress ; it forms the con- 
servative factor in the growth of mind. By its help 
we trail our way through the tangled forests of life's 
devious experiences with ease and comparative safety ; 
without it there could be no evolution of mind or 
mankind. 



54 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

5. The totality of habits is very nearly the sum 
total of personal character. Said the Duke of Wel- 
lington : " Habit a second nature ! Habit is ten times 
nature ! " There is an old Greek fable which declares 
that the goddess of Love once converted a weasel into 
a beautiful woman ; and it adds that this fair creature 
could never see a mouse without jumping at it. 

Hence the personal value and the danger of habits : 
they represent the grooves worn into. our brains by 
long usage ; and as they remorselessly tell the secrets 
of our past lives, so they peremptorily condition our 
future. Well said Novalis, the German philosopher, 
" Character is destiny." That is, our constitutional 
habitudes weave our fates ; they curse and they bless us. 

6. Habits are inheritable. This is now denied by 
a large and able body of extreme Darwinians, who will 
allow no cause for evolution but natural selection. 
Over against their theory, however, there is a host of 
facts not easily explicable except on the old and popu- 
lar belief in the heredity of habit. Take the follow- 
ing, and such cases are legion. Surgeon- General Ham- 
mond tells of a gentleman who, having formed the 
habit of taking a cup of tea at midnight, did this for 
twenty years. His son, born after his death, and 
knowing nothing of this, at twenty years of age one 
midnight awoke with an intense desire for tea, rose 
and gratified the longing; the next night the same 
thing recurred and it became a lifelong custom. 
This man died when a little son was but six years old ; 
the boy grew up, and seldom tasted tea, until on a cer- 
tain midnight the now ancestral passion suddenly 
seized him and he became an habitual midnight tea- 
drinker. The grandson, up to the development of the 



THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 55 

custom, had never heard of the usage of either father 
or grandfather. We can all recall such instances : the 
acquired habits of parents, whether animal or human, 
become inherited habits in the offspring. This is 
very marked in the results of the training of dumb 
animals. The retriever, the setter, the collie and the 
spaniel, among dogs, are good instances. A cross with 
the bulldog has affected for many generations the 
courage and obstinacy of greyhounds, and a cross with 
a greyhound has given to a whole family of shepherd 
dogs a tendency to hunt hares. Mr. Douglas Spalding 
declares that one day, after fondling a dog, he put his 
hand into a basket containing four blind kittens three 
days old. The doggy smell his hand carried set them 
puflSng and spitting in a most comical fashion. It is 
evident that the antipathy to dogs was inherited, and 
also that in the ancestry of the kittens it had resulted 
not from congenital variation but from bitter experi- 
ence. 

7. When habits are inherited we call them in- 
stincts ; and such instinct is thus an individual intel- 
ligence become racial. It is ancestral experience 
crystallized into race character. Le Conte calls it 
"communal experience treasured in inherited struc- 
ture " ; he defines it as " inherited memory," as " in- 
herited knowledge." But the memory, the knowledge, 
the experience were become habitual and so automatic 
before inheritance. Long since — it may be ages ago — ' 
individual experience resulted in usage ; and this usage 
— an ancestral heirloom — became a mental tendency. 
Thus there were swallows in North America before col- 
onists arrived, and only after the land was settled did 
chimneys and barns become manifest conveniences for 



56 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

these birds, which their individual intelligence discov- 
ered and appropriated. A habit resulted which finally, 
by inheritance, was crystallized into instinct, and there 
are now barn and chimney swallows. The same may 
be said of animals introduced from the old country : 
in manner of life and methods of chase and escape 
they have accommodated themselves by a play of ini- 
tiative intelligence, stiffened into habit and inherited 
as an instinct, to their new environment. The fear of 
man acquired by creatures running wild in once in- 
habited regions is the result of surprised observation 
and bitter experience become a race heritage. 

This whole process is beautifully illustrated in the 
recent life history of a small parrot in New Zealand, 
the kea, which until recently fed on insects and the 
honey of flowers. Latterly it has taken to a meat diet, 
and lives on sheep. It began by picking at the sheep- 
skins hung out to dry, and at carcasses of mutton in 
process of curing. About 1868 it commenced to at- 
tack living sheep, which were often found with raw 
and bleeding backs. It has now learned to burrow 
into the animal's body, eating its way down into the 
kidneys, which form its special delicacy. 

8. Instinct may work in full vigor on the moment 
of birth, as in the case of sucking with infants, or it 
may be delayed for years and then appear entirely 
without education in great energy, as in the instance 
of the tea-drinking habit just cited. A Mr. Lardner 
has stated, in Nature, that his brother extracted from 
the oviduct of a West India snake two snakelets six 
inches long; both, though unborn, threatened to 
strike, and made with their tails the characteristic 
burring noise. On the other hand, Spalding kept 



THE GENEKAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 57 

young swallows caged until they w^ere fledged, and 
then allowed them to escape ; they flew off directly, 
showing the instinctive power of flight in a perfect 
but deferred form. 

9. Some kinds of instinct display evidence of a 
high degree of original initiative intelligence. As in 
case of the California woodpecker, which bores holes 
into the bark of trees and plugs them up with wormy 
acorns, thus allowing the grubs within to fatten and 
furnishing itself with a rich future repast ; or of the 
wasp, that stings spiders in the nerve centers, paralyz- 
ing but not killing, and so preserving them as food 
for its larvaB. 

10. We have remarked that all inherited habits are 
instincts ; now we must add that not all instincts are 
inherited habits ; they may result from sexual or nat- 
ural selection. Says Lloyd Morgan : " The instincts 
of female insects, which lead them to anticipate by 
blind prevision the wants of offspring they will never 
see — of caterpillars, which compel them to make pro- 
vision for the chrysalis condition of which they can 
have no experience, or of the copepod crustacean, 
which lays its eggs in a brittle star that they may 
therein develop, probably in the brood-sac, and may 
eveu destroy the reproductive powers of the host for 
the future good of her own offspring — these and many 
others would seem to have no basis in individual ex- 
perience." But even in these cases the instinct be- 
comes a racial heritage; and though the impulse is 
too blind to be termed intelligence, as a psychic fea- 
ture it belongs to the mental rather than to the vital 
factor. 

11. The relation of instinct to initiative intelli- 



58 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

gence being thus intimate, we need not be surprised 
to find that the two are present in animals in an in- 
verse ratio of predominance. The more instinct the 
less individuality, the more inividuality the less in- 
stinct. As Le Conte argues : " The mental wealth con- 
sists of two parts — individual and inherited. In man 
the individual acquisition is large and the inheritance 
comparatively small. In the lower animals the indi- 
vidual acquisition is small and the inheritance is large. 
. . . We now see why intelligence varies inversely as 
instinct. It is because with high intelligence actions 
are so varied in different individuals and in different 
generations that it is impossible that their results 
should accumulate in and become petrified in struc- 
ture. But in the lower animals the conditions of life 
are narrow, the habits run in few lines, and these are 
deepened with every generation, until they become, as 
it were, petrified in brain structure ; ... all such pet- 
rifactions arrest development, because unadaptable to 
new conditions." 

12. Instinct may become very stupid ; as is seen 
in the tendency of caterpillars to go back to the be- 
ginning of a series of actions to commence over again, 
when interrupted. The very wasp, which so wisely 
walls up its prey in burrows, will go through the ac- 
customed action of closing a burrow from which it 
knows the prey to have escaped, before proceeding to 
fill and seal another. The periodic migrations of the 
lemming, a rodent of Norway and Sweden, has for 
ages furnished amazement to the scientific world. At 
varying intervals of from five to twenty years certain 
cultivated districts are overrun by these little crea- 
tures ; in an army they steadily and slowly advance 



THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 59 

down from the mountains to the sea — regardless of all 
obstacles, swimming across streams and lakes, devas- 
tating every field, pursued and preyed upon by wolves, 
bears, foxes and eagles, countless millions swarming to 
the seashore ; the ocean attained, they plunge boldly 
into the waves and swim until exhausted they sink 
beneath the surge^ Doubtless in some previous age 
with a different geological aspect this migration was 
a movement of wisdom required by circumstances and 
justified by the results : it is now only the blind work- 
ing of a dangerous instinct. 

Very likely the same fate v/ould overtake Euro- 
pean birds that annually migrate to Africa by way of 
Italy and Sicily, w^ere the African continent to disap- 
pear. This migratory habit was formed at a geologic- 
al period, when there was practically a land connec- 
tion between the northern and southern continents, 
and when the African elephant and hippopotamus 
roamed over Sicily. Should the north coast of Africa 
sink beneath the waves, it is all but certain that Euro- 
pean migratory birds would seek its sands and groves 
to return no more. 

What we term absent-mindedness is often only 
the stupidity of mechanical thinking; as with that 
Texas farmer, who drove five miles ere he discovered 
that the tail-board of his wagon had been forgotten, 
and returned to find, as he dismounted in his yard, 
that all the while he had been sitting upon it ; or 
as in the case of that eminent Connecticut clergy- 
man, who on a noted Sabbath morning forgot to 
make the " long prayer," and could not understand 
why the service ended at half-past eleven o'clock — a 
circumstance absolutely unique in his ministry. 



60 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR, 

The stupidities of nltra-oonservatism illustrate the 
same infatuation of habit. Truths are held to be true 
merely because they are not new ; and institutions are 
valued chiefly because well established. Somebody 
has well said of the run of mankind, " Men are only 
dead men warmed over." 

13. It is man's glory, however, that he may rise 
above the instinctive to the initiative. He is, after all, 
not a mere brain structure, not a nerve machine con- 
structed and wound up years ago. He not only in- 
herits habits; he may generate them. So doing he 
reigns. There are no kings and queens in the world 
any more save such as these. Originality comes to a 
throne. History of each one is always expecting form- 
ative action, and the world is to every person a con- 
stant challenge of opportunity. He who acts instinc- 
tively is human, he w^ho lives a life of habit has formed 
a character, but that one who can develop new habits 
and bequeath new instincts to the race is divine — 
poet, genius, prophet ; the world waits for him, per- 
secutes him, builds his sepulchre and worships him. 

14. To sum up, w^e find a three fold stratification 
of psychic phenomena : 

(1) An inherited constitution of instincts, or in- 
herited memories and aptitudes. 

(3) A superadded mass of habits, or acquired 
memories and aptitudes. 

(3) An uppermost layer of individuality, forming 
new memories and aptitudes. 



THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. Gl 



CHAPTEE X. 

THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES ON ORGANIC 
FUNCTIONS. 

1. These lectures will often emphasize the fact of 
influence by organic functions over mental states; 
we purpose to prepare for this by treating here of the 
reverse fact, as one of general interest. Says Prof. 
James, " A process set up anywhere in the centers re- 
verberates everywhere and in some way or other affects 
the organism throughout, making its activities either 
greater or less." 

Notice the influence of mental states upon the se- 
cretions. Sorrow in moderation increases, in excess 
checks, the flow of tears. Anxiety often occasions 
perspiration. The transudation of bloody sweat, in 
extreme mental agony, is in a few cases at least well 
attested as a historical fact, and entirely apart from the 
record of Gethsemane. The immediate and striking 
effect of mental states upon lactation are well under- 
stood. 

Or notice the effect upon the vital functions. An 
instrument for measuring the rhythm and flow of the 
pulsation will record extreme unrest in the blood- 
vessels, conditioned by passing emotions ; which show 
themselves potent in constant changes. Thus a dog's 
circulation exhibits tumultuous pulse-markings when 
listening to the sudden scream of another dog. " We 
catch our breath " on a sudden alarm. We " hold the 
breath" whenever attention and expectation are 
strongly engaged ; and a sigh marks the relief of dis- 



62 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

traction. A certain Colonel Townsend could Yolun- 
tarily slow up or quicken the action of the heart. 
Many persons can blush at will ; and now and then one 
is found who can faint if desirable. Great fright may 
cause the heart to stop beating and the blood to " cur- 
dle," and either joy or fear, if sudden and intense, 
may occasion instant death. Excitement quickens 
the circulation ; modesty and shame reveal themselves 
by blushing. The sight of anything horrible may in- 
duce a faint ; while a disgusting object, or even the 
thought of one, may bring about vomiting. 

The influence of the mental states even upon the 
muscles is to be noted. Maniacal fury vastly aug- 
ments the bodily strength, and determination has 
much to do with both vigor and endurance. The som- 
nambulistic condition seems at times to impart aston- 
ishing acuteness and accuracy to the muscular sense 
and to muscular activity. A lively play of the im- 
agination provokes expressive movement of the fea- 
tures, gesticulation, and perhaps talking aloud. An 
actor can only with difficulty declaim a part expressive 
of intense ideas without grimace and posture. Some 
guileless people record the whole inner soul in the 
features and movement. 

A belief that ghosts are present invariably causes 
a cold shudder or the sensation of a cool draft. 

2. So tremendous is this power of mind over 
body, that diseases may often be cured and ailments 
caused by a new idea. A woman once came to Sur- 
geon-General Hammond with what he considered an 
incurable disorder. She sighed as she turned to go 
away disconsolate, saying, " Ah, if I but had some of 
the water of Lourdes ! " — for she was a devout Catho- 



THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. 63 

lie. Now it so happened that a friend had brought 
the doctor a bottle of the genuine water of Lourdes 
to experiment with. He informed the patient of this, 
and promised her some, provided she would first try a 
more potent remedy, Aqua Crotonis (New York city 
aqueduct water). The woman consented, but pro- 
testing that this latter could not reach the case. He 
then gave her a little vial of the real article, but 
labeled "Aqua Crotonis.'^ When this had failed he 
gave her Oroton water, but labeled " Water of Lourdes." 
The result was a complete cure. 

On the other hand, diseases may arise through 
ideas. A woman saw a child caught in a gate, and 
she believed for a moment that its ankle had been 
crushed. So deeply did sympathy cut, that one of her 
own ankles swelled and reddened. Dr. Morton P. 
.Prince cites the case of a lady who believed that the 
mere presence of a rose in the room brought on vio- 
lent catarrh and weeping ; and when she smelt a rose 
these symptoms did invariably occur. So her physi- 
cian presented her suddenly one day with an artificial 
rose, occasioned these disastrous results, and then con- 
fessed the fraud. The mental shock of the revelation 
restored her to sanity, and the affliction ceased. It was 
tie false idea produced the symptoms ; this removed, 
the diseased condition was gone. 

3. The hygienic value of this fact is very evident, 
and in it lies the secret of the faith cure, mind cure 
and Christian Science. The Hebrews were wont to 
quote to one another this proverb, "A joyful heart 
maketh a happy cure." As persistent attention and 
exaggeration of ideas will account for most of oar 
grievances and woes, so distraction from pain and 



64 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

dwelling upon pleasure will guarantee contentment 
and peace. 

4. There is danger to health and sanity in a greedy 
brain, which if pampered will take more than its 
share, in any case large, of the body's nourishment. 
The result is the starvation and drooping of the vital 
organs, and the failure of the machinery of nourish- 
ment itself. Much of ill health among students re- 
sults from this overindulgence of the brain, with the 
inevitable final failure not only of the general physique 
but no less of the central ganglia themselves, whose 
greediness caused the trouble. It is impossible long 
to nourish the head at expense of the body ; general 
decay sooner or later must set in. 

5. An extremely common morbid result of undue 
mental anxiety is what has recently come to be called 
nervous dyspepsia, which is a failure of innervation of 
the stomach. Extremely freakish, it depends upon 
moods and conditions. The simplest food may fail of 
assimilation, and the most complex may at another 
time be appropriated with ease. The immediate cause 
is an inhibition of the nerve of the stomach, the re- 
mote cause general nervous exhaustion, or at least that 
irritability of brain ganglia which precipitates general 
exhaustion. 

6. Nervous prostration — a convenient phrase cover- 
ing much ignorance on the part of the physicians — in 
general describes the most prominent and the most 
alarming malady of the day. It has many forms and 
numberless symptoms, but its cause is exhaustion of 
the nerve cells, through starving or overwork. Doubt- 
less the age is responsible. The sleepy days of former 
stupid discontent, when most men drowsed and the son 



THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. 65 

followed in the footsteps of the father, untroubled by 
ambition, social problems or religious perplexity, are 
forever gone. We are come to an age of intelligent 
unrest, aspiration, inquiry and endeavor. Human ac- 
tion is in general intense to universal nervousness ; hu- 
man thought is in general without repose. The times 
are feverish. There are scarce any more Sleepy Hol- 
lows even am^ong the mountains and in lonely forests ; 
the railroad king or the statesman is as likely to come 
forth from the cot in the wilderness as from the heart 
of a city. The very plow handles think. Villages are 
become but suburbs to the universal civic pande- 
monium. Notice how popular words which describe 
popular men — " wide awake," " smart," " clever," 
" sharp " — indicate the intensity of the striving. Hence 
the prevalent diseases are of the nervous order, hyste- 
ria, apoplexy, neurasthenia, brain-softening, insanity. 
The phrase nervous prostration describes the first 
monitory approaches of these insidious foes to happi- 
ness and health. It assumes protean forms, and has 
numberless symptoms, the most marked of which are 
incapacity for mental work, persistent depression, in- 
digestion and insomnia. 

7. The proper care of the brain involves : 

(1) Its nourishment by good food well digested. 

(2) The preservation of tone throughout the body 
by careful prevention of an oversupply of the brain, 
which should not be allowed to rob the stomach and 
other vital organs. 

(3) Periodic rest in sufficient daily sleep and sab- 
batic and yearly vacations. 

(4) All of which involves a judicious limitation of 
the work done. 



66 THE PSYCHIC FACTOE. 

(5) It should be a fixed habit to divert attention 
from personal pain, from the foul, morbid, and hor- 
rible, and to keep the mind sweet and clean, hopeful 
and aspiring, stored only with the facts and fancies of 
the true, the beautiful, and the good. 

(6) The imagination should be used to intensify 
the " sweetness and light " of existence. Schiller said 
that a truly artistic imagination " only plays with the 
beautiful and plays with the beautiful only." It much 
concerns mental health that the imagination should 
" play " with only the fair and winsome. 

(7) Will to be well ! This, strictly speaking, is the 
"mind cure," is potent in nerve -diseases, and is not 
useless in other maladies. Physicians are constantly 
telling their patients to " give up and go to bed," but 
worse advice, except in the doctor's interest, could not 
be offered. Never give up, and do not go to bed unless 
to sleep. 

Note. — The famous Thomas K. Beecher, in a sermon of 
review, stated that during a ministry of many years he had 
buried two thousand persons, and only three of them had died 
a natural death. On being reproached for so extraordinary a 
statement by an eminent neighboring doctor of medicine, he 
vented his little joke and explained by saying that those three 
were the ones who had not employed a physician. This will at 
least serve to illustrate the growing feeling among men of 
thought, that we have been doctored overmuch, and that the 
recuperative powers of the human body have not been suffi- 
ciently appealed to through the imagination and the will. 



SECTION III. 
SUBCONSCIOUSNESS. 



CHAPTER XL 

subconscious:n"ess in ge:n'eral. 

1. By the word subconsciousness we describe 
mental states that are neither conscious nor uncon- 
scious. 

2. We have observed that the nerve centers, directly 
they become " lower " and subordinate to higher co- 
ordinating centers, retreat into the background, their 
activities fading out of personal sight and surpervision. 
Consciousness withdraws to the higher, and the lower 
perform their work with an intelligence of their own 
that is automatic and in a measure impersonal and 
beyond the purview of the ordinary every-day self- 
recognition. 

3. We have seen that even personal habits tend to 
retreat from the field of conscious activity and to be- 
come automatic and impersonal. The same is true of 
instincts, which rule the life with or without conscious 
supervision. 

4. Sleep introduces us to another condition of the 
subconscious, and one in which it is possible to inves- 
tigate the condition itself. 



68 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

5. To this realm belong those obscure mental 
activities which recent writers have termed " uncon- 
scious cerebration." A man wearies of a problem he 
can not solve, and leaves it in despair ; on the morrow, 
unexpectedly and when he is thinking of something 
else, the solution comes to him as a happy thought. 
You forget a name, and give up the attempt ; by and 
by it pops into thought unceremoniously. One hears 
a tune, likes the air and forgets at once ; on the mor- 
row it can not be recalled, but a week later one is found 
humming it over. We sleep with a determination to 
rise at a certain hour, and on the stroke of the clock 
we are somehow aroused. A large proportion of our 
thinking and willing is done for us by a somewhat 
within, and we get only the results. Often the ob- 
scure decision anticipates our conscious discussion and 
resolution. As was true of that country parson who, 
called to a city church on a largo salary, betook him- 
self to prayer for light. After several weeks a neigh- 
bor accosted his eldest : " Say, Jim, is your father 
going to accept that call ? " The boy replied, " Well, 
father is still praying for light, but most of the things 
is packed ! " 

6. Here, also, find place somnambulism, hypnosis 
and those subtile powers of the human mind which 
hitherto have been claimed for sorcery and spirit- 
ism, and which now we have come to name thought- 
transference and lucidity. 

7. To these must be added certain diseased condi- 
tions which, in the decay of personality and the fading 
out of consciousness, push up into notice — to wit, hal- 
lucination and dual and multiple personality. 

8. All these subconscious states are marked by 



SLEEP. 69 

automatism, which is quite independent of the ego, 
and often defifct of it. They form a personality of 
their own, and develop consciousness beyond the 
threshold of consciousness. 



CHAPTER XII. 

SLEEP. 

1. Nerveless creatures do not in any true sense 
sleep, but they have seasons of repose that may sug- 
gest and may even simulate it. 

Unicellular organisms very commonly go through 
stages of inactivity, when they are encysted and quies- 
cent. Plants enjoy periods of rest, and often they 
droop and fold their leaves at night; and nerveless 
communities of animal cells are not incessantly active. 

2. Animals with nerves not only can, but must, 
sleep. The intenser the mental activity the greater 
the need. ISTerve cells in action consume much pre- 
cious substance, dissipate enormous stores of energy 
and will die of exhaustion if constantly worked. The 
lifelong perpetual beating of the heart may seem to 
be in contravention of this, but who knows that this 
wonderful organ is innervated all through the twenty- 
four hours of the day by precisely the same cells? 
Analogy renders this extremely improbable. 

3. With all animals that have active brains, sleep 
is a very significant factor, not only of health, but no 
less of life itself. In man's development it assumes 
vast importance. The worst form of torture for us is 
to be kept constantly awake. Continued insomnia 



70 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

results in madness, and ultimately in death. And we 
are all ready to say with Sancho Panzai^ " Blessings on 
him who first invented sleep ! " 

4. Sleep is induced by weariness, darkness, quiet 
and low monotonous noises, like the buzzing of insects, 
the murmur of a breath of wind among leaves, the fall 
of a tiny surf upon the seashore, a mother's lullaby, 
or the droning of a dull preacher ; or by gentle move- 
ments, like the rocking of a cradle and the swinging 
of a hammock. In short, anything which soothes 
psychic activity and determines blood from the brain 
will tend to cause somnolence. 

5. On the contrary, awakening can be effected by 
any kind of rousement, determining blood to the 
brain and exciting psychic movement. A sharp call, 
a vigorous shake, or a sudden flood of light will gen- 
erally suffice. 

6. The process of going to sleep is very interest- 
ing. The members succumb in regular succession ; 
first the head grows heavy, then the upper eyelids 
droop, the subhyoid muscles yawn, the inspirations 
become slower and deeper, the lower jaw falls, the 
chin drops upon the chest, and the limbs relax. A 
similar sequence of psychic phenomena occurs. 
Speech becomes confused, vision indistinct, thought 
obscure. First the will and the moral nature go to 
sleep, and consciousness falls into a petty anarchy. 
Visions come and go, often with marvelous rapidity, 
in grotesque connection and succession, continuing 
nothing, perfecting nothing and evanescent. At last 
the imagination slumbers, and there is profound rest. 

7. Waking reverses this process : for it is the im- 
adnation that first arouses itself to renew its chaotic 



SLEEP. 71 

dreaming; then follows the will, reason and moral 
nature ; finally the eyes see and the tongue recovers 
speech. 

8. The physiological explanation of these facts is 
simply the withdrawal or the supply of nutrition. In 
sleep the brain is anasmic. The same is true of the 
spinal cord ; the retina also is blanched, and all the 
end organs unsupplied ; indeed, the nerve centers re- 
ceive only a slight and sluggish flow of blood — just 
enough to repair waste but not sufficient for active 
work. 

Hence sleep can be prevented by excitement and 
by medicinal stimulants, and can be artificially oc- 
casioned by pressure on the great arteries of the neck, 
or by acting through drugs upon the vasomotor cen- 
ters. 

9. It is probable that in sleep the mind is at all 
times subconsciously active. Dreams may utterly fail 
but there is a subdued self -awareness ; and some nerve 
cells are always on guard and practically awake. Per- 
sons in deepest repose can be aroused by a word, if 
only you know what is the exciting signal. The bark 
of a watch dog, the ringing of a bell, the cry of a babe 
will suffice. We can sometimes appoint an awaken- 
ing with ourselves and start up on the stroke of the 
clock. 

10. Some good work, in a quiet way, is often done- 
in sleep, especially if it be restless : plans are matured, 
problems solved and happy thoughts evolved, as ap- 
pears on the following morning. The advice so often 
given concerning some troublesome aspect of life's 
puzzle, " to sleep over it," is good philosophy. 

11. During sleep the temperature of the body falls 



72 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

from one half a degree to two degrees, the amount of 
carbonic dioxide exhaled is diminished, and the amount 
of heat given off falls from 112 calories to 40 (for a 
man weighing 147 pounds— Helmholtz). This shows 
that tissue changes are very slight. 

12. The amount of sleep required is, for a child, 
one half its time ; for an adult, one third. Women 
need more than men and among men there is vari- 
ance. Napoleon could sleep and wake at will, and 
needed but four or five hours : he died of exhaustion, 
however, at fifty-two. Descartes required ten hours 
and was incapable of efficient brain work without it. 
Doubtless, in this matter of amount, both the quality 
and vigor of nerve cells are involved. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

DREAMING. 

1. Some people never dream, or, if they do so, fail 
to remember ; with most, however, at least just after 
losing one's self and just before awakening, subcon- 
sciousness is more or less alert. 

2. The whole nervous system, though partially in 
repose, now displays a certain amount of sensitiveness. 
A touch, a sound, a ray of light, a pungent odor, a 
pain, a sense of heat or cold, modifies the rhythm of 
respiration, determines a contraction of the vessels 
of the forearm, increases the general pressure of the 
blood, causes an extra inflow of blood to the brain, 
and quickens the heart-beat. This sensitiveness, both 
peripheral and central, combined with ample cerebral 



DKEAMING. 73 

blood supply, gives us the physical conditions of 
dreaming. 

3. Psychologically, the supremely important fact 
in dreaming is the withdrawal of the personal con- 
sciousness, with its trained will and developed moral 
nature. Personality slumbers, the impersonal remains 
awake. Eeality, central control and the co-ordination 
of ego and non-ego, all practically cease to exert in- 
fluence. 

4. Some claim that dreaming is the earliest and 
primary form of self -awareness, and that waking is a 
secondary state developed to meet external needs. Be 
that as it may, the two are radically distinct. In the 
former the imagination, dominated only by fortuitous 
association, plays at anarchy. 

5. The orgy begins even before the drowsy person- 
al consciousness is disposed of ; and for a while, and 
indeed so long as slumber remains light, the work of 
fantastic creation may be controlled. The author is 
able in light sleep to end his dreams by an act of will 
if they prove unpleasant, and to continue and elabo- 
rate if agreeable. At best, however, the sway of will is 
weak and brief ; imagination soon and easily escapes its 
leash, as slumber deepens. 

6. Hence dreams are apt to be irrational, not regu- 
lated by the known limitations of tiuie, space and 
causation. They play childishly with extension and • 
duration, are often utterly absurd, are sometimes quite 
inconsequential, and not seldom vicious or darkly 
criminal. Miss Cobbe cites several instances of atro- 
cious misconduct on the part of persons whose eleva- 
tion of character rendered the infamy of it quite in- 

She tells of a distinguished philanthro- 
6 



74 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

pist, an eminent jurist, who constantly committed 
forgery and regretted the act only when he learned 
that he was to be hanged ; of a woman whose life 
was devoted to the instruction of pauper children, who, 
seeing one making a face at her, doubled him up in 
the smallest compass and poked him through the bars 
of a lion's cage ; and, finally, of one of the most 
benevolent of men who ran his best friend through 
the body and felt extreme satisfaction on seeing the 
point of his sword come out through the shoulders of 
his beloved companion. 

7. Yet are dreams intensely realistic, in a way. 
After all is said that can be of their unreasonableness 
and immorality, they are yet sufficiently actualistic to 
justify the Hebrew Psalmist, when, comparing life to 
a dream-troubled sleep, he said, " I shall be satisfied 
when I awake with thy likeness"; sufficiently true to 
life's evanescent and unsatisfactory phenomena to 
point the dramatist's cynicism, when he made one of 
his players declare : 

" We are such stuff as dreams are made of, 
And our little life is rounded with a sleep, 
And like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, 
And, like an insubstantial pageant, faded, 
Leave not a rack behind." 

This close connection of the two worlds is not to 
be forgotten. 

8. Dreams are determined by central or by pe- 
ripheral stimulation. Of the central determination 
we know little ; it seems to be an automatic action of 



DREAMINa. 75 

nerve cells in the brain, sending out thought waves 
that cause other nerve cells to explode and other 
thought waves to vibrate. The locality of the start- 
ing point and the energy of the impulsion probably 
determine the character of the succeeding visions. 

Of peripheral stimulation very little is required to 
decide the nature of dreams ; an odor, a breath of air, 
the bark of a dog, a rustle, or a cramped muscle or a 
touch of indigestion, the pain of a wound or a disturb- 
ance of circulation, will any and all suffice to provoke 
elaborate trains of fantastic imaginings. A physician 
who applied a hot- water bottle to his feet on retiring 
dreamed that he was climbing Mount Etna and found 
the heat insufferable. Another, who applied a blister 
to his head, was scalped by a party of Indians. Dr. 
Beattie mentions a man who could be made to dream 
on any subject by^ suggestive whispering in his ear. 
Lobster salad just before retiring has been known to 
produce very lively and not always agreeable visions. 
The dreaming of patients in painful illness is generally 
distressing. 

In this connection a speculation of Prof. Ladd is 
of interest. He claims, and seems to prove, that the 
dots, lines, splashes and angles which we observe in 
the field of vision when the eyes are closed — what the 
Germans name Eigenliclit., and Prof. Helmholtz calls 
"luminous chaos" and "luminous dust" — to some 
extent determine the form and character of dreams, 
and to some degree occasion them. 

9. Dreams often transpire in an incredibly short 
space of time. A person was suddenly aroused from 
sleep by a few drops of water sprinkled on his face ; 
he pictured on the instant the events of an entire life, 



76 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

in which happiness and sorrow mingled, and which 
finally terminated with an altercation upon the bor- 
ders of an extensive lake, into which his exasperated 
companion succeeded after a struggle in plunging 
him. Dr. Abercrombie relates a similar case of a gen- 
tleman who dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, 
joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, car- 
ried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and led out to 
execution. He awoke as the fatal fusillade resounded 
in loud report, to discover that the cause of his dis- 
turbance was a noise in the adjoining room. Lord 
Holland fell asleep when listening to somebody read- 
ing, had a long dream, and yet awoke in time to hear 
the conclusion of the sentence, of which he remem- 
bered the beginning. 

10. Another most interesting feature is the com- 
pleteness of the hallucination. There is absence of 
all surprise over ridiculous transformations, grotesque 
situations and impossible combinations. "iWZ ad- 
mirari " is now the motto of even the most skeptical 
and the most susceptible. This is because impressions 
from the outside are not present to contrast ideas : 
ideas have undergone an absolute as well as a relative 
increase in intensity. Time, space, motion, pleasure, 
pain, are exaggerated, and, occupying the whole field of 
thought, produce npon the subconsciousness the effect 
of reality. 

11. The coherence of these hallucinations is worth 
consideration. While dreams do not in general 
" stand upon the order of their going," there is enough 
of orderliness of sequence to suggest the working of 
some law of connection other than that of mere asso- 
ciation of ideas. Many persons, of whom the author 



DREAMINa 77 

is one, receive their first intimation of approaching 
sleep in fragmentary pictures, which succeed one 
another in the most incoherent way, like views from a 
stereopticon thrown upon a canvas, whereon the audi- 
ence knows not what will appear next — a grand old 
moss-covered castle, a tall chimney, the face of a 
friend, etc. This is followed by a dramatic show with 
lively action, in which the dreamer may be actor or 
spectator, or both, and which, however grotesque, at 
least preserves a thread of sequence. It seems highly 
probable that the nerve cells of the brain, on being 
loosed from control, acting at first disjointly, as slum- 
ber deepens soon begin to combine, but under some 
sway less rigid than that of the conscious will. A 
kind of dream personality is suggested. 

12. In the same connection is the curious fact that 
we dream that we dream. Often we bemoan lying 
awake, when some one stirs us and we learn to our 
astonishment that we have been only dreaming that 
we were awake. Much insomnia is little less than this 
restlessness and vivid dreaming. 

We are confident that this phenomenon occurs 
only with habitual dreamers, in whom the secondary 
dream personality is so well developed that a fainter 
tertiary personality looms up in the distant shadows. 

We have no evidence that any one ever carried this 
involvement into further complications, to dream that 
they dreamed that they dreamed — though this is by no 
means impossible. 

13. Sometimes dreams manifest a vigor and range 
of intelligence not usually in control. While most 
persons have only silly imaginings in slumber, some 
see visions that are the product of much creative 



78 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

power. The author remembers on one occasion im- 
agining himself turning over a book of fine engrav- 
ings. He had never seen them before, as he assured 
himself while dreaming and afterward, on awaking, 
and while intensely vivid impressions remained. AVhat 
was it enabled him in a moment to create a score of 
varied and superb works of art ? Moreover, he has 
not only created whole dramas, filled with characters, 
scenes and witticisms ; he has himself personally acted 
in them as one of his own dramatis personcs ; and then 
he has lain awake a long while marveling over this 
utterly unusual activity, never having succeeded at 
impersonation, nor having been knowingly capable of 
dramatic composition. 

Some really great works of genius have arisen in 
this way. Tartini, a famous violinist and composer, 
dreamed that the devil had become his slave, and that 
one day he asked the Evil One whether he could play 
the fiddle. Satan replied that he thought he might 
pick up a tune, and thereupon he played an exquisite 
sonata. Tartini, imperfectly remembering this on 
awakening, noted it down, and it is now known to 
musicians as II Trillo del Diavolo. And in like man- 
ner Coleridge composed his poem of Kubla Khan. 

14. Dreams are occasionally significant precursors 
of disease. Armand de Villeneuve dreamed that a dog 
bit him in the leg, and a few days later fell victim to 
a cancerous ulcer on the very spot bitten. Gessner, in 
his sleep, fancied that he was fanged in the left side 
by a serpent ; soon on the same place he developed a 
malignant pustule, of which he died. A man saw, in 
a dream, an epileptic, and shortly himself became one. 
A woman spoke to a person who could not replyto her 



DREAMINa 79 

because dumb, and she awoke to find that she herself 
had lost the power of speech. 

These facts indicate that subconscious centers are 
capable of sending up to the dream personality valu- 
able information. 

15. That dreams occasionally become veridical has 
been the belief of many in all ages. The night before 
Julius Csesar was assassinated his wife Calphurnia 
dreamed that her husband fell bleeding across her 
knees. On the night that Attila died the Emperor 
Marcian, in slumber, saw the bow of the Hunnish con- 
queror broken asunder. So at least the old records 
tell us, and such stories are legion. Our Bible is full 
of similar narratives, which unbelievers have ridiculed 
and which the devout have swallowed with no little 
choking. 

To the great amazement of the scientific world, the 
Society of Psychical Research has recently collected a 
very large array of no less marvelous narratives of sig- 
nificant dreams told by persons of the highest charac- 
ter and position, and verified by corroborative docu- 
ments and circumstances. 

We must delay the attempt to throw light upon 
these claims until the study of thought-transference 
and lucidity shall engage our attention. Well and 
truly wrote Byron : 

" Sleep hath its own world, 
And a wide realm of wild reality ; 
And dreams in their development have breath, 
And tears and tortures and the touch of joy. 
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, 
They take a weight from off our waking toils ; 
They do divide our being ; they become 
A portion of ourselves as of our time, 



80 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

And look like heralds of Eternity. 

They pass like spirits of the past, they speak 

Like sibyls of the future ; they have power, 

The tyranny of pleasure and of pain. 

They make us what we were not, what they will ; 

And shake us with the vision that's gone by — 

The dread of vanished shadows ! " 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SOMNAMBULISM. 

1. A SLEEPER dreaming sometimes acts his dream : 
he talks or walks. Such a person we describe as a 
sleep-walker or somnambule. 

The condition is induced by apparently trivial 
causes — an undigested meal, a lingering mental ex- 
citement, or a disturbance of slumber from without. 
It may and often does occur during sleep by day. 

2. Physiological explanation of this lies in the 
partial awakening of certain end organs and of the 
corresponding sensory-motor centers. 

The psychological explanation is in the increased 
coherence and activity of subconsciousness. 

3. Sleep-talking at first is incoherent, but it may 
become in time, if cultivated, a gift of intelligent con- 
versation. One of the students of Elmira College, a 
remarkably talented young lady, who when awake was 
unusually reticent and discreet, when dreaming could 
be skillfully led on by her roommate to reveal all the 
occurrences of the day. Carpenter tells of a young 
lady who, when in school, often talked in sleep, her 
ideas always running upon the events of the previous 



SOxMNAMBULISM. 81 

day. If encouraged by leading questions, she would 
give a coherent account of these occurrences, provided 
the queries were pertinent; questions not pertinent 
were not answered, and to all other ordinary sounds 
she was quite insensible. 

Sleep-walking undergoes a like development. It 
begins in a mere locomotive restlessness, but if culti- 
vated becomes an ambulatory life of uncanny adven- 
ture, in which certain end organs are alert and certain 
brain ganglia active, while the muscular system is wide 
awake. Sleep-walkers wander through houses, climb 
roofs, stray abroad over the country and in general 
manifest an adventurous disposition. 

4. If encouraged by circumstances, the somnam- 
bulic habit develops into a secondary sleep character, 
a subconscious sleep life, in which the center of per- 
sonality is shifted. -A new memory arises; all occur- 
rences in former attacks being tenaciously retained, a 
new mnemonic chain forms; each somnambulic ex- 
perience connects itself with all previous ones. More- 
over, the somnambule, in addition to these memories, 
holds in addition the entire storehouse of waking rec- 
ollections, and so is richer in resources of reminis- 
cence asleep than awake. Then characteristics assert 
themselves : the patient is a " visual " — that is, sees, 
but hears not — or is an "audile " — that is, hears, but 
sees not — or is a " tactile " — that is, having hypersen- 
sitive touch, dispenses with both eyes and ears. Or 
he may be quite like himself and only a little " queer." 

5. We saw that, in dreaming, attention is not ob- 
servant, but rapt ; in the sleep-walking condition at- 
tention arouses itself and becomes discriminating. 
There is now a non-ego as well as an ego ; the somnam- 



82 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

bule may even perceive that he is other than himself, 
and may delight in it. He may move through the 
world and converse and act much as if awake, with 
accurate judgment of men and things. Eational in- 
telligence is now partially aroused, though displaying 
marked departures from the normal types. Only the 
old personality slumbers ; the thought center seems 
shifted, and a dual consciousness inaugurated. Indeed, 
the somnambule often refers to his waking self as to a 
third person. 

6. Some very amazing incidental phenomena have 
always rendered this condition the puzzle and despair 
of metaphysicians and other scientists. There is often 
a muscular dexterity quite unwonted, and capable of 
most noteworthy feats of skill and daring, sight with 
closed eyes, and touch beyond all ordinary experience 
hypersensitive. Imagination is intensely vivid, and 
the most astonishing creations of dreams may become 
actual performances. A young, ignorant girl may be- 
gin to preach or recite poems with excellent pronun- 
ciation, rhetoric and elocution. The most intricate 
problems may be solved, the most difficult music per- 
formed. We shall presently see that thought-trans- 
ference and lucidity are also frequently manifested to 
a remarkable degree. 

7. This condition may in some patients be volun- 
tarily induced, in which case, however, it merges into 
the hypnotic trance. Of this anon. 

8. Somnambules must be gently aroused, if dis- 
turbed at all. A violent shock is injurious, and may 
prove fatal. In general the trance lapses of itself into 
ordinary sleep, and on awaking the patient remem- 
bers the sleep acting only as a fading dream, if at all. 



SOMNAMBULISM. 83 

9. Action in sleep is much more exhaustive than 
mere dreaming, and the actors awake wearied and 
pale. Hence this condition has always been yiew^ed by 
physicians as unhealthy. It would seem wise, there- 
fore, rigorously to repress all tendencies in this direc- 
tion by attention to health, the ventilation of bedrooms 
and the removal and prevention of disturbance. 

10. A careful review of these facts will convince 
us that we are here dealing with only the old problem 
of dreaming, but in an exaggerated form and degree. 
Nothing absolutely new by w^ay of psychic phenomena 
is developed. The creative imaginings of somnambu- 
lism are no more wonderful than the splendid visions, 
correct impersonations, and elevated poems and dramas 
of dreaming ; only they are spoken and acted, as well 
as conceived. Its marvelous hypersensitiveness of the 
end organs is but what w^e find occasionally in the 
waking condition of certain exceptionally gifted per- 
sons, while its thought-transference and lucidity only 
multiply in number, intensity and quality, as we shall 
soon see — experiences which many have when in full 
possession of all their faculties. 

Somnambulism does not offer us a new problem ; it 
puts exclamation and interrogation points over against 
facts ordinarily obscure, but quite common, and vastly 
significant ; it proves that we are creatures of marvel- 
ous capabilities ; that man's knowledge of himself is 
the least developed of all the sciences ; and that, as Sir 
Isaac Newton said of his own immense learning, the 
wisest have only " scratched the surface of things." 



84: THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

CHAPTEE XV. 

HYP:t^OSIS. 

1. We have learned that it is of ourselves we sleep, 
that sleeping we dream, and that dreaming we often 
talk and act our visions. 

Now let sleep and dreaming, sleep talking and 
walking, be induced by another than ourselves, and 
we may describe the condition as hypnosis. We are 
hypnotized, the sleep is enforced and the dreams are 
suggested by another. In short, hypnosis is induced 
sleep, induced dreaming and induced somnambulism. 
The essential feature is the induction, and the impor- 
tant problem of hypnotism is the secret of its nature 
and method. We may expect all hypnotic phenome- 
na to group themselves under the three heads of sleep, 
of dreaming and of somnambulism. ^ 

2. Hypnosis is a widespread possibility. Its range 
is as extensive, probably, as the possession of brains, 
or of elaborate nervous systems ; and it thus appears 
that even in low forms there exists a realm of sub- 
consciousness. Hypnotic results have been obtained 
in the shrimp, crab, lobster and sepia; in the cod, 
brill and torpedo fish; in the tadpole, frog, lizard, 
crocodile, serpent and tortoise ; in some birds ; in the 
Guinea pig and in the rabbit. It is generally found 
sufficient to place the animal in some abnormal posi- 
tion — for instance, on its back — and to keep it quiet, 
with slight, continuous pressure. Soon it refrains 
from voluntary movement, and anaesthesia of skin 
and mucous membrane results. With repeated ex- 



HYPNOSIS. 85 

perinient animals become more and more suscep- 
tible. 

3. Of human beings the majority may become . 
either agent or sensitive. Authorities vary as to the 
proportion of sensitives ; they agree, however, in hold- 
ing that persistent experiment would overcome re- 
sistance in most cases. Forel thinks that every per- 
son not insane in time would succumb ; and as in 
every one there is a realm of the subconscious, this is 
probably true. 

It has generally been supposed that health, cul- 
ture and intelligence, affording self-control, favored 
resistance ; and that a weak will, incapacity to fix at- 
tention and the hysteric temperament predisposed to 
easy surrender. Moll, however, with many other able 
experimenters, now claims that the weak and hyster- 
ical are, if anything, less amenable to suggestion, and 
that the best sensitives are vigorous in mind and body. 

4. The condition is produced by any method that 
fixes the attention and arouses expectation of its oc- 
currence. Thus, by passes or other manipulation — 
by causing the sensitive to gaze fixedly at a bright 
object — by a sudden flash of light, a violent noise, a 
word of command, etc., the suggestion may enter by 
any of the senses. In well-trained cases a simple 
direction by letter, by telegraph, or by telephone will 
do; and a mental command, working by thought- 
transference over, miles of distance, has been known 
repeatedly to succeed. 

Bernheim's method is as follows : " You place the 
patient in an armchair, and make him for a few 
seconds, or minutes, look up into your eyes; and 
meanwhile tell him, in a loud and confident but monot- 



86 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

onous tone, that he is going on famously, that his eyes 
are ah^eady swimming, that the lids are heavy, and 
that he feels a pleasant warmth in legs and arms. 
Then you make him look at the thumb and first fin- 
ger of your left hand, which you gradually lower, so 
that the eyelids may follow. If the eyes now close of 
themselves, the game is won. If not,. you say, 'Shut 
your eyes,' and proceed with suggestions." 

A lady accidentally hypnotized a girl — a perfect 
stranger — whom she met in a railroad station, and 
whose face she simply stroked in sympathy. A gen- 
tleman hypnotized his babe by playfully shaking his 
finger at it. Esdaile succeeded with a blind colored 
man, by gazing silently upon him over the wall, as the 
patient was engaged eating his dinner; the laborer 
gradually ceased to eat, and in a quarter of an hour 
was perfectly entranced and cataleptic. This was re- 
peated at untimely seasons, and when the operator's 
presence could not have been known, always with like 
results. The " evil eye " of ancient superstition in 
this experiment was probably realized. 

Baron von Shrenk-Notzing has shown that hypno- 
sis may be hastened or intensified by narcotics. A few 
whiifs of chloroform will put even an obstinate patient 
into susceptible condition, and often a narcotic of it- 
self is sufficient to predispose to all the Well-known 
conditions ; moreover, a person only slightly under 
control may be thrown into deeper mesmeric trance. 
This is so because narcotics affect the conscious per- 
sonality, but leave the subconscious largely, if not 
wholly, awake. 

5. Hypnosis occurs in varying degrees of complete- 
ness, in some cases resembling ordinary drowsiness. 



HYPNOSIS. 87 

in others effecting profound revolution in the work- 
ings of the nervous system. A few sensitives retain 
throughout somewhat of personal consciousness, and 
decided power of resistance to absurd, disagreeable, or 
immoral suggestions. Most, however, are only sub- 
conscious and passively obedient. 

In its most perfect manifestation the condition 
presents three phases, though not in any fixed order — 
lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. 

6. Lethargy, or deep hypnotic sleep — for it is 
nothing else — can be produced by firmly closing the 
eyes, if the entranced patient knows that such result 
is expected thereby. Sensitives become under this 
treatment perfectly inert, with tendency to rigidity. 
Psychosis is intensely subconscious, and some claim 
that the state is one of complete unconsciousness. 
They, however, hear, understand and respond to the 
commands of the operator, and are therefore so far 
forth subconscious, precisely as in the case of ordi- 
nary slumber. 

Pressure on tendons will render associated m^uscles 
inflexible; the whole body can be stiffened by pres- 
sure on certain parts of the legs ; so that patients can 
be placed with head on the back of a chair and feet 
on the floor, unyielding as a board. There is complete 
insensibility to pain, and needles may be inserted even 
into the quick between nail and finger tip without 
provoking outcry. Latterly, the lethargic stage has 
been used as a substitute for anaesthetics in surgical 
operations ; and the most elaborate cuttings have been 
carried on with an insensibility as complete as that 
conferred by chloroform. Sensitives must, however, 
be trained by repeated mesmerizing for this. 



88 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

7. Catalepsy, or hypnotic dreaming, is produced 
by simply opening the eyes of the lethargic patient. 
There is now a sort of impersonal consciousness, which 
replaces the coma of lethargy. An attitude or a 
movement can be impressed from without upon the 
subject, who will retain the attitude or complete the 
movement. In fact, the dreaming condition now 
obtains, only the dreams are suggested and guided 
by the will of another, and the patient is sensitive to 
only one suggestion at a time — a perfect automaton. 
She is a devout Catholic — for we describe an actual 
case — and a gong rung to simulate the ringing of a 
church bell will produce an attitude of prayer, with 
eyes lowered, and head and body meekly bowed. In- 
sert a red glass between her staring eyes and the light, 
and she will receive a suggestion of conflagration, will 
see flames and burning wretches, and will wring her 
hands in horror, fear and pity. Whistle a waltz, and 
she will dance. Indeed, any vivid idea suggested 
works its way and by channel of any of the senses, into 
her brain, and arouses, by purely reflex action, pos- 
tures, gestures and cries appropriate. 

It is a curious fact that the two halves of the 
brain can be operated upon separately, by the direc- 
tion of suggestion to the right or to the left end or- 
gans. Thus a double and opposing suggestiveness 
may work the most contrary emotions and expressions ; 
the right brain may be frightened and the left en- 
couraged, with the result of the left half of the face 
exhibiting terror and the right wreathing itself in 
smiles. 

8. In hypnotic somnambulism the sensitive is 
sleep talking and sleep walking and knows her own 



HYPNOSIS. 89 

dreams. There is not only subconscious activity of a 
high degree of acuteness, but also a pronounced sleep 
personality. Sensibility to pain is fully recovered, 
complex ideas possible, speech regained. 

Three series of phenomena are now to be ob- 
served : 

(1) The sensitive is curiously en rapport with the 
operator ; her sleep personality is in strange identity 
with his own. There is a blind confidence, a devoted 
clinging, an implicit trust, entirely non existent be- 
fore ; and so close is this psychic union that salt or 
pepper on the operator's tongue will cause the pa- 
tient's face to draw awry, and headaches and tooth- 
aches can at a word be transferred backward and for- 
ward. Thought-transference becomes an exceedingly 
easy channel of communication, and commands may 
be made and executed by silent volition. 

(2) An expressed judgment of the operator is ac- 
cepted as fact ; nay, more, the sensitive's imagination 
plays with and elaborates the most improbable asser- 
tions with infantile credulity, and as though her mind 
were only an annex of his own. A file bitten is pro- 
nounced good chocolate, because so declared. The 
patient is asked whether she hears the canary sing, 
and enlarges upon the variety and richness of the 
tones. She is assured that an Englishman present is 
a Chinaman, believes it, and pictures vividly his Ori- , 
ental robes, slit eyes and pigtail. Another guest is 
accepted as a block of ice, with flowers growing on the 
surface ; and she points to the glacial streams flowing 
from him, and picks Marechal Niel roses from his 
pencil case. She is told to sleep, and is in profound 
slumber; she is awakened, and then again bidden to 

7 



90 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

sleep until the hat of one of the company be removed, 
and, obeying, the moment the hat is removed she 
awakens herself. She is commanded to poison the 
Chinaman with arsenic, does so, and weeps bitterly in 
remorse ; giving him the phantom cup, she gasps, 
" Drink it not — the cup is poisoned ! " as if driven 
by dread fatality to what horrified her. 

(3) Finally, the operator may play upon the sensi- 
tive's machinery of inhibition and acceleration. He 
may make it impossible for her to pronounce the let- 
ter A, and take from her the very idea of the letter, 
so that all words containing A are sounded without it. 
He may inhibit the use of any sense, rendering her 
blind with open eyes, deaf, dumb, v/ithout taste, or 
without smell. He can make her lame in arm or leg. 
Or, on the contrary, he may accelerate any sense or 
function. She will detect a particular quarter of a 
dollar from twenty such, simply by weight, poising 
them upon a finger. She can be brought to see things 
microscopically small or through a cardboard, and 
even behold her own image on a piece of writing pa- 
per, using it as a mirror. Inform her that a picture 
is on a blank sheet of paper, and she v/ill at once per- 
ceive it, and if it be mixed with other blank sheets will 
extract the right one; turn it upside down and she will 
complain that her picture is reversed. Nay, these im- 
aginary sketches appear to respond to all the laws of 
optics, can be rendered double by pushing inward one 
of her eyes, can be doubly refracted, etc. Draw a mark 
with red chalk on paper, and assure her that the page 
is blank, and she will not perceive it. To be sure, the 
eyes work normally, and the usual impression is made 
upon the retina, as appears from the fact that when 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 91 

her vision is directed to another blank sheet she does 
see the complementary green after-image of the red 
chalk mark. She sees and is inhibited only from per- 
ceiving. If the mark be doubled by a prism, she will 
perceive the second image, but still ignore the first and 
direct one. 

9. Hypnosis is terminated by reversing passes, if 
these were made at first, by blowing upon the eyes, by 
a word of command, by predicting that at such a mo- 
ment or on such an occurrence the patient will awake. 
Care should be taken to remove all unpleasant previous 
suggestions, to tell the sleeper that the situation is a 
very comfortable one, and that the awakening shall be 
to health and peace of mind. 

10. The condition is favorable to the display of 
thought-transference and lucidity; of which a little 
later. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 

1. Hypnosis may be repeated indefinitely ; and 
with repetition the sensitive becomes more and more 
susceptible, as to speediness of subjugation, as to in- 
tensity and as to duration. 

In some cases the control can be maintained for 
long periods — for months, and even for years. 

2. Renewals all connect themselves with previous 
experience in a consecutive order, and a mnemonic 
chain forms quite as in natural somnambulism. Rec- 
ollection of what has taken place in the trance rarely 
presents itself on awaking, except perhaps as a fading 



92 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

dream ; but it is perfectly active and accurate when 
hypnosis is renewed. Hence facts acquired in the sleep 
may be recovered on the awakening by indirect meth- 
ods, appealing to this coherent subconsciousness. Give 
the aroused patient a planchette, and the needed infor- 
mation will be forthcoming. Mr. Gurney describes a 
large number of experiments in arithmetical problems 
given a patient when under influence, the answers hav- 
ing been duly written out by planchette in the normal 
condition, when the latter was wholly unaware of what 
he was doing. Dr. Proust describes a person who falls 
asleep himself without outside suggestion and without 
warning, who for short periods exists in an entirely 
anomalous life ; he is a veritable Dr. Jekyll, only his 
Mr. Hyde is not at all a demon. On May 11, 1889, he 
was breakfasting at a restaurant in Paris, and two days 
later found himself at Troyes. Of what had happened 
during the interval he could remember nothing ; he 
recalled, however, that before losing his primary con- 
sciousness he had worn a greatcoat containing in a 
pocket two hundred and twenty-six francs. He was 
hypnotized, and at once gave a lucid account of his 
somnambulation, of his visit to Troyes, of friends dined 
wdth there, and where he left the overcoat and purse. 
These statements were all verified, and the coat and 
purse with exact amount of money recovered. Other 
similar authentic cases are on record. 

3. These facts account for the gradual rise in hyp- 
notics of what has been called secondary personality, 
which, after all, is only intensified sleep personality. 
Chronic cases slowly develop a distinct subconscious 
character, and if the waking character be weak or vi- 
cious, the " new creature " may become the most re- 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 93 

spectable member of the firm. (Eead account of 

Blanch Witt and of Marceline K in Proceedings 

of the Society of Psychical Eesearch, vol. xv, pp. 316, 
217, 219, 220.) 

4. When the secondary personality has become well 
established, itself may be hypnotized, and so in time a 
third sleep character appear, the shade of a shadow, 
the dream of a dream. This is verified in the famous 

case of Madame B , an elderly French peasant, 

who, though old, dull and ignorant, shy, passive and 
stolid, has become the most interesting woman in 
Europe. 

Leonie B (long the favorite sensitive of Prof. 

Janet), who falls asleep at a word or by volition ex- 
erted over great distance, has developed, when in the 
mesmeric trance, an extensive mnemonic chain and a 
distinct character peculiar to the condition. When 
hypnotized she calls herself Leontine, and is, as such, 
vivacious, saucy and not very truthful ; her memory 
now is more extensive than Leonie's, comprising as it 
does all that the latter knows and all that the former 
has experienced. One day Janet received a note from 
Leonie written in serious and respectful style and de- 
claring that she was ill. Over the page began another 
epistle in a quite different style. " My dear good Sir : 
I must tell you that B really, really makes me suf- 
fer very much ; she can not sleep, she spits blood, she 
hurts me I I am going to demolish her ; she bores me ; 
I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine." 

Madame B knew nothing of this second letter 

when closely questioned. These duplex letters became 
common. Madame B would write Leontine's post- 
scripts automatically, in a fit of abstraction, and if on 



94 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

arousing herself she discovered what she had done, she 
would tear up the missive. Hence Leontine hit upon 
a plan of placing them in a photographic album, into 
which Leonie could not look without falling into cata- 
lepsy. 

After Leontine's personality was well established, 
noticing that there was a background of subconscious 
cerebration even in her psychic life, Janet succeeded 
in throwing her into mesmeric trance and thereby 
causing to emerge a third personality, at first faint but 
now daily becoming more and more characteristic. 

This third Madame B called herself Leonore, and 

knew, in addition to her own memories, all that Leo- 
nie or Leontine recollected. Leonore is thoughtful, 
grave, addicted to poetry and much the most estimable 
mxCmber of Madame B 's copartnership. 

5. It is said that back of Leonore a still other indi- 
viduality looms up ; and the question arises, whether 
there is any limit to these mnemonic chains and more 
or less distinct personalities. To meet such astound- 
ing facts, F. W. H. Myers has broached a hypothesis, 
in which he assumes that every cell in our bodies has 
its own cellular personality with its own particular 
memory, and that every combination of cells in or as- 
sociated with limbs or organs develop composite per- 
sonalities with associate memories. " These, however, 
do not deserve the title of separate personalities (ex- 
cept in the sense in which that word may be applied 
to the brute creation), and their memories may never 
come into the human consciousness at all. Above 
these rises the immense nervous apparatus, which cor- 
responds to the human mind; and of this apparatus 
we habitually use only such proportion as our English 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 95 

vocabulary bears to all possible combinations of the 
alphabet. The letters of our inward alphabet will 
shape themselves into many other dialects ; and many 
other personalities, as distinct as those we assume to 
be ourselves, can be made out of our mental material. 
. . . Each of the personalities within us is itself the 
summation of many narrower and inferior memories. 
It is conceivable that there may be for each man a yet 
more comprehensive personality, which correlates and 
comprises all known and unknown phases of his being.'' 

It would be premature to accept this hypothesis as 
anything more than a mere surmise, but its conclusion 
seems in the highest degree probable. That man, in 
the last analysis, is an indefinite series of personalities, 
is as utterly repugnant to self-respect as it is inherently 
im.probable. We are safe in concluding that the facts 
of sleep personality emphasize not the mere divisibility 
of man, but the boundless resources of his mind and 
the countless possibilities of his being for achievement 
and for character. 

And the supreme psychological importance of hyp- 
notism lies in the fact that it furnishes a method for 
cleaving the strata of consciousness, for analyzing the 
workings of the mental machinery, and for studying 
in detail the mental processes. Like the microscope 
in histology, the telescope in astronomy, or the spec- 
troscope in spectrum analysis, it is a new instrument 
of research. 

6. While memory of what occurs in the mesmeric 
trance generally fails to persist into tlie waking state, 
commands and suggestions for future action, then re- 
ceived, are likely to be executed in due time — not as 
the urgings of another will but as self-suggested. A 



96 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

clerk, haying been hypnotized, was told that two and 
two make five. The next day all his accounting went 
wrong, and it was discovered that wherever two and 
two came together he added them as five. Here the 
sleep consciousness overruled the normal working of 
his mind. Promises made in the trance are performed 
on awaking, not as promises but as irresistible im- 
pulses. Commands are obeyed under ill-defined sense 
of obligation, while suggestions become happy thoughts 
that demand heeding. 

Moll states that the longest time of successful post- 
hypnotic suggestion is recorded by Liebeault— one 
year. 

Where the suggestion is not carried out duly, the 
idea of it remains to torment the victim. 

7. Hence the therapeutic value of hypnotism. 
Forel tells of an old drunkard and would-be suicide, 
whom he recovered : in the trance it was suggested 
to him that ardent spirits were a curse, and he was 
commanded to abstain. In consequence, when awake, 
he, seemingly of his own motion, became a total ab- 
stainer. This experiment has proved successful in 
many similar cases. Habitual aches, mostly neural- 
gias of various kinds, have been allayed in numberless 
instances. Baierlacher claims to have removed pain 
even in a case of cancer of the stomach and for days* 
Chorea and hysteria also seem amenable to this treat- 
ment. Bickford- Smith transferred a headache from 
Leonie B to himself, simply by so willing. 

These facts suggest an obvious danger. The sub- 
ject is slave of the operator, and may become his help- 
less victim or ready accomplice in vice or crime. It is 
evident that the practice should become matter for the 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 97 

strictest legal regulation. Liebeault advises, as a pre- 
ventive of undue or unrighteous influence, that the 
person enslaved should seek rehypnotization at the 
hand of a thoroughly trustworthy operator, who is to 
suggest that no other party shall have power to induce 
the condition. This, it is claimed, will work complete 
deliverance from the bondage. 

8. Two incidental dangers beset this method of 
experimentation : 

(1) Cross-mesmerism — w^here the patient is brought 
under the influence of more than one person at a single 
sitting ; when with sensitive subjects there are violent 
contortions and refusal of obedience to suggestion and 
command. From this state it is difficult to arouse the 
patient, and headache and physical discomfort result. 

(2) Imperfect awakening or oversudden rouse- 
ment, in the first place subjecting the patient to all 
the discomforts and mischances which may befall a 
person not in full possession of normal consciousness ; 
and in the second, startling and shocking the nervous 
system. 

9. The general effect upon health is in dispute. 
Probably it injures some and benefits others. The 
author would advise that it be not resorted to witlK)ut 
cause, and that all aimless and frivolous experimenta- 
tion be strictly prohibited. 

10. Hypnosis only develops, in the fullest degree, 
the natural- possibilities of the subconscious. Its 
lethargy is but deep sleep under control ; its catalep- 
sy nothing but intense dreaming, when the visions are 
suggested by another imagination ; its somnambulism 
ordinary sleep talking and w^alking, directed by an- 
other will. The powerful sway of the operator finds 



98 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

ample analogy in what the world has ever recognized 
as in the scope of personal influence. Hypnotic hal- 
lucination is only exaggeration of a perfectly normal 
process which tends to go on in all of us, and is re- 
pressed only by memory, and a will trained by experi- 
ence. Nor are its grander performances entirely with- 
out parallel ; its outbursts of genius have been equaled 
by similar extemporization in dreaming, and by the 
accomplishments of the waking state, in exceptional 
persons. The fact merely indicates that very remark- 
able developments in multiple consciousness have long 
since been studied under the phrase " unconscious cer- 
ebration." Socrates had his " daemon," and many 
men have exhibited two contrasted natures. There 
was once a Swedish king who entered a ballroom, in 
the glow of healthful youth, to receive at the entrance 
a note warning him that his life was in danger. He 
tossed the missive contemptuously aside, only to fall a 
little later, and in the height of the festivities, under 
the treacherous blow of the very friend who penned 
the warning. The wretch in one breath would slay 
him and would deliver him, at once best guardian and 
crudest foe. Lacenaire, a famous French criminal, 
the same day he committed a murder risked his life 
to save that of a cat ! It is said of Eobespierre, that 
even while he was the terror of France, and wading 
knee-deep in the blood of innocence, to the two sisters 
with whom he boarded he was a modest, virtuous and 
estimable gentleman, and they mourned his loss sin- 
cerely. Indeed, we find hints of the same fact in 
quite rudimentary formes of automatism. James states 
that, in a perfectly healthy young man, who can write 
with the planchette, " I lately found the hand to be en- 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 99 

tirely anaesthetic during the writing act ; I could prick 
it severely without the subject knowing the fact. The 
writing of the planchette, however, accused me in 
strong terms of hurting the hand. Pricks on the 
other nonwriting hand, meanw^iile, which awakened 
strong protest from the young man's vocal organs, 
were denied to exist by the self which made the 
planchette go." Binet has shown that in every one, 
at all times, subconscious potentialities exist, and can 
be aroused, interrogated and educated. 

In short, hypnotism offers no new field of research, 
but only a new method of exploiting facts which, 
without it, must be at least suspected. Some one has 
said that there is nothing new in hypnotism but the 
name. 

11. The ethical bearings of the subject seem at 
first confusing ; but remember that somnambulism is 
only dreaming exaggerated, and that hj^pnotism is 
only somnambulism exaggerated, and the darkness 
will clear. One's accountability for wrong-doing in 
dreams is manifestly limited to the sinfulness of pre- 
vious errors in diet, and to the general trend of char- 
acter ; and in somnambulism it is evident that neither 
merit nor ill desert can attain a high degree. The 
same must be true of the hypnotic condition : the sen- 
sitive is so completely under controlling influence as 
to be practically non compos^ and can be blamed only. 
for such utterances of character as without compulsion 
flow forth from the nature within. In the stage of 
lethargy the patient is mere w^ax in the hands of the 
molder ; in catalepsy, the dream that goes on is con- 
trolled by another ; and even in the somnambulistic 
phase, so powerful is the suggestion of the operator 



100 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

that resistance is generally useless, and hence responsi- 
bility at the lowest point imaginable ; and courts have 
so decided again and again. In cases of multiple per- 
sonality, freedom of action under the new conditions 
may develop, in time, into a self-control so genuine, 
and a life so varied, that accountability begins to re- 
cover its normal degree ; it is much as in the case of 
one who should be, during different periods of his life, 
a clergyman, a horse-jockey and a submarine diver ; 
though the same standards can not be used for each 
and all of his life phases, a just judgment of his sub- 
stantial personality can conceivably be formed. Leonie, 
Leontine and Leonore may exhibit different facets of 
character, but the three are substantially and ethically 
one and neither is soulless. 

12. This subject should not be dismissed without 
some reference to its very interesting history. 

Hypnotism formed the ancient stronghold of nec- 
romancy and sorcery and in all ages has been the in- 
strument of priestcraft, charlatanry and superstition. 
Among old-time peoples, as now amid barbarous and 
savage races, the ignorant and credulous were hypno- 
tized, frightened, swayed, cajoled, injured and cured, 
by frauds and illusions innumerable. Sorcerers were 
both deceivers and themselves deceived : they dealt 
in the dreams, thought-transference and lucidity of 
hypnosis'; they naturally were feared, courted and per- 
secuted. Their necromancy, so far as it had any sub- 
stratum of fact, was based on what has been described. 

The " evil eye " was nothing but the mesmeric 
glance of the sorcerer, marring by command and sug- 
gestion the life of the hypnotized victim. 

Crystal vision was a picturesque form of the work- 



THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 101 

ing of the same phenomena. A cup of ink, a crystal 
polished, a mirror, or even the thumb nail, was used ; 
any reflecting surface would do, but crystal was pre- 
ferred. A boy or girl thrown into sleep was set to 
gaze upon this surface, and on it dreams appeared, 
rendered objective by hallucination. Sensitives could 
often mesmerize themselves by simply gazing into the 
crystal, with resulting dreams, apparently externalized. 

The sibyls and other oracles of antiquity were 
only sensitives who had displayed unusual gifts in 
thought-transference ; they were always hypnotized, 
unless able of themselves to fall into the trance. Sor- 
cerers secured lads, often by violence, put them to 
sleep, and forced them to see and prophesy. The 
girl of Philippi whom Paul freed was the wretched 
victim of such scoundrels, of whom Elymas and Simon 
Magus were fair specimens. Oracular performances 
occurred amid much impressive incantation — a dark- 
ened room, lamps burning low, clouds of incense, 
the sorcerer in flowing robes of much splendor, and 
the like. 

The black art of the Middle Age was only a res- 
toration of ancient practices under Christian auspices, 
with a new vocabulary. JSTothing occurred that science 
is not to-day studying under conditions favorable to 
solution. 

The witches of those times and later were but evil 
women, who, finding that they possessed a power they 
themselves deemed Satanic, used it to annoy their 
neighbors, to vent their spites, to earn a dishonest liv- 
ing and to make themselves feared. It was wrong to 
hang them, but most of them richly deserved to be 
handed. 



102 ' THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

The history of sorcery, from the beginning until 
now, has been a dreary record of gross immorality and 
cruel wrong, the strong ever preying on the weak. 
The evils involved have always seemed so many and 
so great, that in all ages and lands it has fallen under 
the ban, in general forbidden on pain of death. Still, 
so prevalent has superstition proved, and such power- 
ful interests have antagonized repression, that prohib- 
itory statutes have been always and everywhere more 
or less evaded. 

The first g^/a^^'-scientific attempts to investigate, 
describe and classify the facts were made by Mesmer, 
in association with much magician's trumpery. His 
crude work proved of little value except to goad sci- 
entists to accurate study of the phenomena. 

In 1845 Baron von Reichenbach announced the dis- 
covery of a new imponderable force, which he called 
odyl^ and supposed to exist throughout the universe, 
and to be developed by magnets, by certain crystals, 
and by human bodies. Persons sensitive to odyl saw 
luminous phenomena near the poles of the magnets 
and about the bodies of others in whom the force was 
concentrated. Hence the term anitnal magnetism^ 
which attached itself to the whole class of hypnotic 
phenomena. 

Two American lecturers in 1850, broaching a 
new theory based upon electrical discoveries, sub- 
stituted the title of electro -iiology^ which became 
popular. 

Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, first subjected the 
facts to accurate study in 1842, and the science of 
hypnotism received from him both its name and its 
respectability. Carpenter became his faithful expos- 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 103 

itor, examining and verifying his experiments and 
results. To-day many men of great shrewdness and 
some of eminence are pondering with deep interest 
the facts. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THOUGHT-TRAKSFEKEKCE. 

1. This remarkable psychic fact has long been 
anticipated in discovery by certain proverbs based on 
an obscure perception of the general law ; as, " Think 
of an angel and you shall see his wings," or " Think of 
the devil and you shall see his horns." Also by certain 
facts never well understood, as the power most per- 
sons possess of disturbing another's flow of thought by 
steady gaze, though the head of the observed be quite 
averted, or the instantaneous occurrence of identical 
ideas or words to two or more persons when together. 
The discovery itself, however, has been recent, and 
more so the demonstration. 

Thought-transference is now accepted as one of 
the subconscious gifts of the human mind, very gen- 
erally by those scientists who devote themselves to 
consideration of psychical phenomena. It is freely 
used as a good working theory in explanation of yet 
more occult facts. 

This theory is, that, subject to certain laws mostly 
unknown, thought leaps from one mind to another 
mind by processes unexplained. 

2. The phenomena occur most persistently and 
vividly in the hypnotic trance, when between opera- 
tor and sensitive the freest mental interchange takes 



104 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

place : the former may simply will the latter to sleep 
or to wake, to do or to forbear, without sign ; and even 
salt or pejoper on the operator's tongue will cause the 
patient to make a wry face. One instance, of thou- 
sands at hand, is that of a hysterical girl of fourteen, 
w^hom a certain Dr. Dusart could will into a mesmeric 
trance and arouse without a word of command. More 
than a hundred times he did this with perfect success. 
On one occasion he left her without giving the usual 
order to sleep until a particular hour next morning. 
Eemembering the omission, he issued the order men- 
tally when at a distance of seven metres from the 
house. In the morning, when he asked the patient 
how it was that she had slept without any command, 
she replied, ''True, but five minutes afterward I 
clearly heard you tell me to sleep until eight o'clock." 
He then told the patient to sleep until she received 
command to awake, and directed her parents to mark 
the exact hour of the awakening. At 2 p. m. he gave 
the order mentally, at a distance of seven kilometres, 
and afterward found that it had been punctually 
obeyed ; and this experiment was successfully repeated 
at different hours. 

This explains, in part at least, the power of spirit- 
ualistic mediums. Falling into trance, or at least a 
similar subconscious condition, they read the minds 
of sitters, and this forms their chief stock in trade. 
The author once, when four thousand miles from 
home, sat with a medium, an ignorant sailor and 
a total stranger, who gave him correctly his own 
name and the names of mother, wife and wife's 
father, besides fishing up many facts and names quite 
forgotten. 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 105 

3. But hypnosis is not a necessary condition ; the 
phenomena may characterize any state or semistate of 
subconsciousness — dreaming, reverie, or unconscious 
cerebration. This will best appear in a tolerably full 
account of the most complete and carefully guarded 
of the many demonstrations. Key. P. H. Newnham, 
vicar of Maker, Devonport, a respectable and intelli- 
gent English clergyman, in 1871 instituted a series of 
experiments covering a period of eight months. The 
results appear as forty manuscript pages of notes, and 
among these three hundred and nine replies auto- 
matically written by Mrs. Newnham with planchette, to 
questions which she did not see nor hear and of which 
she could learn only telepathically. The wife always sat 
at a small table in a low chair, w^ith eyes shut, leaning 
backward. The vicar sat about eight feet distant, at 
a rather high table, with his back to the lady. Plan- 
chette would begin to write instantly, the answer often 
having been half finished before the question was 
completely written. Often the sensitive would touch 
the board with but a single finger, and this would 
suffice. She had no faintest conscious knowledge of 
what was in process of writing, and often no hint as 
to the subject or drift of the questions. The answers 
were a curious combination of knowledge and igno- 
rance, never beyond the mental powers of the percipi- 
ent, but on a lower moral level than her usual conver- 
sation. She would evade and even lie, when unable 
to respond correctly; though evasion and falsehood 
were utterly foreign to her character. The answers 
often did not correspond to the opinions or expecta- 
tions of either party. Here was instantaneous and 
accurate thought-transference extending over many 



106 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

months, through more than three hundred formal 
trials, all successful. 

4. On the range of these phenomena we can not 
speak positively, so little is known of the conditions 
necessary or favoring. Some persons seem more sus- 
ceptible than others. Twins are thus en rapport to 
a wonderful extent. Probably all have the gift as a 
latent potentiality ; with a few it is a very luminous 
feature. 

5. No limit has ever been fixed to the distance 
over which transference can be effected : in the case 
of twins it has covered a separation of thousands of 
miles. Nor has any light yet been shed upon the 
nature of the medium nor upon the speed of transmis- 
sion. 

6. The philosophical bearings of these facts are 
wide-reaching and important. As thought-transfer- 
ence can not be classed with sensations, and indicates 
a quite other inlet for human knowledge, the sensa- 
tionalism of Hobbes, Locke and Comte seems anni- 
hilated. The tendency of philosophy in both France 
and England for over three hundred years has been 
sensationalistic ; and nearly all the metaphysicians of 
these two countries have built their systems upon the 
postulate, that human knowledge comes only through 
the senses. It now appears that we must push out 
the stakes and lengthen the cords of our canopy of 
thought. It would seem that knowledge may enter 
unawares, in accordance with laws of which sensation- 
alists and positivists have known nothing. 

This discovery removes from the theological doc- 
trine of a divine inspiration the stigma of violating 
probabilities. Inspiration has become the most fea- 



* LUCIDITY. 107 

sible and natural of religious processes ; indeed, it is 
no longer even an unlikely phenomenon. That an 
Intelligence above us should drop thoughts into the 
human mind seems the simplest and most reasonable 
method of communication between the seen and the 
unseen worlds. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LUCIDITY. 

1. Correlated with thought-transference we 
have the very different though no less amazing fact 
of lucidity, or " second sight," which seems to be the 
working of a supersensuous subconscious vision, dis- 
cerning matters utterly beyond the reach of any known 
organ. 

2. History gives us instances of the exercise of 
this kind of knowledge, but until recently science has 
treated them with contempt. Gregory of Tours tells 
us that Ambrose, having fallen asleep while saying 
mass in the cathedral of Milan, dreamed that St. Mar- 
tin had just died at Tours, in accord with the exact 
facts. Swedenborg claimed to have seen the great 
fire in London while it progressed, and though in 
Stockholm at the time. 

3. This gift also, like thought-transference, mani- 
fests itself in a marked degree during the mesmeric 
trance, and is an important feature of genuine medi- 
umship. It has given to heathen sorceries and the 
art magic, to soothsaying and crystal vision their un- 
canny significance ; and it has always been a question 



108 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

whether dreams do not derive a grave meaning at 
times from its exercise. 

4. The evidence has of late years accumulated, and 
that such a gift is possessed by some at least seems no 

longer questionable. Madame B (Leonie-Leon- 

tine-Leonore), when hypnotized, possesses this power 
to a remarkable degree. Janet, Eichet and other ex- 
perts have subjected this woman to every variety of 
test. We give in Eichet's own words his methods 
of procedure and calculation of chances : " From 
the midst of ten packs of fifty-two cards each, I 
drew at hazard a card, which I placed in an opaque 
envelope. I did this in low light at one end of my 
library, which is nearly five metres in length, Leonie 
sitting at the opposite end, with her back to me. . . . 
The envelope was gummed, and I closed it at once. 
. . . The name of the card indicated by Leonie was 
written by her in full, or written by me before the en- 
velope was opened, and I kept an exact account of all 
the experiments made. No conscious or unconscious, 
mental or nonmental suggestion could be made by 
me, since I was totally ignorant of the card placed in 
the envelope." 

Thus proceeding, in sixty-eight trials Leonie sev- 
enteen times offered full description. Of cards en- 
tirely right, with an antecedent probability of only 
one or two, Leonie guessed twelve ; of cards with suit 
right, with antecedent probability of seventeen, she 
guessed forty-five ; of cards with color right, with an- 
tecedent probability of thirty-four, she guessed forty- 
five. The chances in favor of this, not allowing for 
a law of lucidity, were one in one billion of billions. 
Bickford Smith, a wealthy English gentleman, who 



LUCIDITY. 109 

was permitted to hypnotize Leonie, asked her for a 
description of his father's country house in England. 
This she gave, with minute particulars in every regard 
correct. She expressed surprise at the size of the 
kitchen and the number of the books in the library. 
She placed several peculiar trees, and described the 
gardeners and other underlings at their work. 

On the 27th of a certain September, Leonie de- 
scribed a bicycle race, which did not occur until the 
29th ; she named the winner, and said that there 
would be three prizes for him — a fact no one could rea- 
sonably have anticipated ; her improbable prophecy was 
fulfilled by a telegraphically added prize from the min- 
ister of war, which, with what was called the " lap prize," 
made three in all. Cases as remarkable multiply. 

Braid, of Manchester, an unimpeachable witness, 
narrates the story of an ignorant girl unacquainted 
with music and the^ grammar of her own language, 
who, hypnotized, in his presence sang songs in foreign 
languages with Jenny Lind, with a pronunciation and 
intonation so exact that persons not very near sup- 
posed there was but one voice, and that the Swedish 
Nightingale's. 

5. Lucidity, also, aims a deadly blow at the sensa- 
tional philosophy. If a clairvoyant may learn the 
markings of concealed cards, see visions of what is 
yet to occur, describe houses and people hundreds of 
miles away, " speak with tongues," and anticipate the 
refinements of finished art, then the popular schools 
of modern psychologists are without a philosophy. 
Moreover, these facts, like those of telepathy, serve to 
remove a reproach of long standing from the Hebrew 
Scriptures, which have been arraigned by scientists 



110 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

for recording unnatural displays of psychic power on 
the part of the prophets of Judaism. The prophetic 
insight of the Hebrew seers can no longer be stig- 
matized as unnatural. They snrqly saw visions and 
dreamed dreams ; the distant and the future appeared 
to them as a shifting panorama ; and if their behold- 
ings proved viridical, the facts did not contravene what 
we now know to be the bounds of reason. 

6. Lucidity and thought-transference will account, 
in part, at least, for the rise of religion among prime- 
val savages. The seers became prophets of mystery, 
and in time rose to some little glimpse of the moral 
order of the universe : at first mere medicine men, 
deceiving and deceived, they slowly ascended into a 
lordlier realm of spiritual insight and religious guid- 
ance. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

hallucikatio:n". 

1. We must distinguish hallucination from illu- 
sion. One may be deceived by his diseased senses — as 
when, during the sufferance of a cold in his head, he 
smells smoke constantly, and goes through his dwell- 
ing in search for fire ; as when, if a victim of catarrh of 
the middle ear, he hears drums, gongs and bells sound- 
ing loudly, and now and then is startled by the dis- 
tinct calling of his name ; as when — the retina hyper- 
sensitive — he sees the specter of some dear friend, in 
mere renewal of an old visual sensation : this is illu- 
sion. Hallucination, as we use it, is simply the exter- 
nalizing of ideas. 



HALLUCINATION. HI 

3. Its history is a profound study in psychology. 
It begins with the savage condition, and because it 
pre-eminently characterizes childhood. One of the 
many difficult lessons of childhood is to distinguish 
between impressions from without and ideas within, 
notions are so vivid : easily the rag baby becomes a 
well-dressed living personality ; readily the hobby horse 
attains the size, grace, spirit and speed of a thorough- 
bred ; and if the imagination be unusually active, the 
child is in serious danger of becoming a gay romancer, 
in time to be branded as an arrant liar. 

The savage conditions representing the childhood 
of the race is beset by the same peril. Savages exter- 
nalize ideas and fill the world with their fancies ; they 
believe even their sleeping dreams. A savage dreams 
of his friend, of his horse, of his dog, of the trees, the 
landscape, the stars ; and he infers that not only friend 
and enemy, but that animals, inert things, the moon 
and the stars, have' shadowy souls, and that these va- 
porous spirits actually come to him in his sleep. 
Hence their almost universal belief in immortality, 
and the pathetic custom of placing on the graves of 
the dead weapons, utensils and food ; for the shades 
of these things, it is supposed, will accompany the 
soul of the buried into the land of shadows. Hence 
also the slaughter of wives and slaves, horses and dogs, 
over the burial place of a chieftain. So tenaciously 
does this superstition, based on hallucination, persist- 
and push up even into low grades of civilization, that 
down to 1781 the ancient funeral sacrifice of the war- 
rior's horse was recognized at Treves by leading a dead 
soldier's horse to his grave. A piece of money is still 
put into the hands of a corpse at an Irish wake ; and 



112 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

in most countries of Europe may still be seen the set- 
ting out of offerings of food for the departed. All 
this time-honored superstition arises from the exter- 
nalizing of mere ideas. 

From the same cause arise fetich worship, Na- 
ture worship, and in time an elaborate mythology. 
The Fiji Islanders used to celebrate great sacrificial 
feasts to their gods. These religious ceremonies, how- 
ever, were mere orgies of gluttony, as all the animals 
slain were greedily devoured ; the deities were sup- 
posed to be satisfied with the souls of the departed 
beasts. " In India," says Dubois, " a woman adores 
her market basket, and offers sacrifice to it as well as 
to the rice mill and other household implements. A 
carpenter does like homage to his hatchet, adze and 
other tools, and likewise offers sacrifice to them. A 
Brahman does so to the st3de with which he is going 
to write, a soldier to the arms he is to use in the field, 
a mason to his trowel, and a farmer to his plow." 
The worship of plants, animals, stones, water, wind, 
sky, ocean, etc., is inevitable at an early stage of hu- 
man culture. 

3. While savages externalize their dreams after they 
awake as well as before, even the most intelligent and 
civilized do so at least during sleep. A very Plato, a 
Shakespeare, a Darwin, must for the time fall under 
the sway of his own vagrant fancies and believe them 
real. The facts of dreaming, which we have fally 
presented, are largely the working of this simple law 
of hallucination. 

The same is true of both natural and induced som- 
nambulism, as we have observed : the mind, dreaming, 
externalizes its visions. 



HALLUCINATION. 113 

4. Allied to the myth and dream fantasy of the 
mind, we must consider its romancing gift. The 
poets, novelists and artists have all been dreamers, 
their life work to produce in others a hallucination 
they voluntarily summon up in themselves ; they see 
fictions and make them real, as landscape, as history, 
as personal beauty. All great art creators come to 
know their own handiwork by a kind of recognition, 
scarcely to be distinguished from actual acquaintance. 
And active minds respond in a kindred hallucination, 
joyfully self-imposed. A Ulysses, a King Arthur, a 

* William Tell, a Pickwick, a St. Cecilia, a Venus de 
Milo, become as delightfully real to the imaginative, 
as though the legend, the novel, the painting or the 
statue were historical portrayal. 

5. Hallucination is produced by certain narcotics, 
which occasion mental conditions varying from the 
profound quiet of perfect sleep to the most vivid 
dreaming or the most active somnambulism. These 
drugs paralyze the will, deaden the moral nature, con- 
fuse the reason and dull the senses, at the same time 
that they more or less excite the cerebro-spinal gan- 
glia. If taken in doses appropriate to produce the 
effect, hallucination is inevitable. The narcotized per- 
son dreams, and, it may be, acts his dreams ; but the 
dreaming is intensely spectacular, and the acting often 
bitterest tragedy. 

Tobacco, though one of the least harmful of the 
narcotics usually abused, is yet noxious in every case 
and dangerous in many. Its first effect is to stimu- 
late the faculties and soothe the feelings ; its final re- 
sult is to lessen mental power and enfeeble the will. 
It is said that no young man has graduated valedicto- 



114 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

rian at Harvard College who was an habitual user of 
this drug. Upon the young its action is peculiarly 
harmful. 

De Quincey has portrayed vividly the deleterious 
effects of morphine on the same line of mental disease. 
He says : '• Whatsoever things capable of being visually 
represented I did but think of in the darkness, im- 
mediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the 
eye ; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, 
when once thus traced in faint and visionary colors, 
like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out 
by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into insufferable 
splendor that fretted my heart." Besides these phan- 
toms, projected against the darkness, there was a 
dream life of marvelous intensity. " Under the con- 
necting feeling of tropical heats and vertical sunlights, 
I brought together all creatures, beasts, birds and rep- 
tiles, all trees and plants, all usages and appearances 
that are found in tropical regions, and assembled them 
together in China and Hindostan. From kindred 
feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under 
the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at 
by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into 
pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or 
in secret rooms. I was the idol, I was the priest, I 
was worshiped, I was sacrificed. I fled from the 
wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia. . . . 
I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins 
with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at 
the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with can- 
cerous kisses by crocodiles, and lay confounded with 
unutterably slimy things among reeds and Nilotic 
mud." 



HALLUCINATION. 115 

The fantasy of alcoholic intoxication, in time cul- 
minating in the horrors of delirium tremens, is known 
to all. In its first stages the ganglia narcotized are 
stimulated, and there are dancing, laughter and chat- 
ter. Later, the mind begins to externalize its throng- 
ing ideas, and the muscles to succumb to the second- 
ary stupefying effect of the poison. Now the inebriate 
staggers, unable to co-ordinate movements perfectly, 
and hallucination becomes a prominent symptom and 
may rise into mania. This is the dangerous stage, 
when victims become suicides and murderers. Finally, 
a lethargy ends all psychic phenomena. In the trem- 
bling delirium hallucination is the principal symptom. 

6. Fevers, in like manner an.d degree, exciting the 
nerve cells of the brain, through a poison generated in 
the blood or through mere hypersemia, produce simi- 
lar results. 

7. Madness caps_ the climax by persistent, intense 
and tragic externalizing of ideas, especially that form 
which is called intellectual insanity. Here hallu- 
cination is the chief symptom, and the phenomena 
those generally pertaining to incoherent and troubled 
dreaming. Emotional insanity is less characterized 
by objectivity of ideas, and rather rouses to white heat 
states of feeling. Some one has said that the intellec- 
tually insane are furious dreamers, the emotionally 
mad dreaming furies ; neither has self-control, nor 
is swayed effectually by judgment, reason or con- 
science, and both are prey to nervous disease. 

Insanity presents no new facts ; it gives us what 
we have abundantly in dreaming, hypnotism and the 
narcotic excitement, only more of it and for longer 
periods. It is chronic hallucination. 



116 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

It is a very common affection. One of the authors's 
hobbies is, that every tenth person is insane and that 
every person is one tenth insane. That is, no one is 
perfectly mind-balanced, while many are seriously and 
up to the boundaries of chronic hallucination de- 
fective. Guiteau, who murdered President Garfield, 
though he seemed only a crank, in the autopsy dis- 
played marked departures in the condition of his 
brain. Probably all cranks would be found, on post- 
mortem examination, to have been afflicted with simi- 
lar lackings or disease of central nerve tissue. Any 
one can become insane by extreme and prolonged ac- 
tivity of the mind or by brooding over evils ; habits 
of health, laughter, sunshine, charity, patience and 
moderation are the preventives. 

8. Hallucination is in itself a perfectly natural 
process ; the dangerous element in it is its tendency 
to disturb the rightful balance of related intensities. 
We shall see later that sensations are more intense 
than perceptions, and these are more so than memo- 
ries, while memories are more vivid than purely im- 
aginative ideas; and that the mind distinguishes 
between these grades of mentality by a nice discrimi- 
nation of intensities. Disturb the ratio, and the cor- 
rect discrimination becomes impossible. It is easily 
disturbed in the child, because not yet fully estab- 
lished ; and in the savage, because so far as subtler 
mental processes are concerned they are children. 
And with all men when outside impressions entirely 
fail, in dreaming no distinction can be made, and 
attention is rapt and deceived. Narcotics, fevers, and 
madness produce a like result by so overstimulating 
the ideational activity of the brain as to cause in the 



HALLUCINATION. 117 

intense vividness of the conception an outdazzling 
of the distinction. With an inebriated, delirious, or 
mad man outside reality compared with inner fantasy 
is but as a taper in the noonday sunshine. And po- 
etry, fiction and other fine arts present the same un- 
balancing process, with delight self-induced. 

9. Hence the great importance of guarding against 
our ideas. Sir William Hamilton well remarks : " Noth- 
ing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the 
imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of 
more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright 
fancies in this respect may be compared to those an- 
gels whom the Scriptures represent as covering their 
eyes with their wings." 



SECTION IV. 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISEASE. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

HYSTERIA. 

1. This distressing malady chiefly attacks young 
and nervous women, and is marked by outbursts of 
emotional excitement, convulsive bodily movements, 
hyposesthesia and hyperaesthesia, and incomplete and 
transient paralysis. Intensely psychic in all its symp- 
toms, it is marked by inordinate egotism, hilarity, de- 
pression, assumption of pretended diseases, catalepsy, 
trance and ecstasy. 

2. It is a contagious affliction, and simulates the 
manner and method of the zymotic disorders. Car- 
penter's story of the mewing sisters will illustrate this 
point. The malady began in the hysterical tendency 
of a young girl to mew just as the clock struck nine 
and the morning session of the convent school was 
about to open. Soon other nervous girls caught the 
infection, and the solo became a chorus. Finally, all 
the young ladies without exception mewed, and the 
father was at his wits' end. One morning, however, 
he appeared with a horsewhip and anticipated the 



HYSTERIA. 119 

stroke of nine by threatening to flog the first who 
should commence the concert ; and his firmness was 
rewarded with silence. 

The dancing mania of the Middle Age, named after 
St. Vitus, was a much more serious malady. Fits of 
nervous jactation, leaping and convulsion spread like 
cholera over Europe. Groups of temporary lunatics 
went whirling along the roads and through the city 
streets attracting the ill-balanced and spreading dis- 
may. Those who came to look on and laugh stayed 
to dance and follow suit. 

As nearly all intense religious experience predis- 
poses to emotional excitement, it is not strange that 
with low-grade intelligence hysteria should accompany 
fanatical crusades, camp meetings and revivals ; the 
remarkable fact is that the disease seems to be " catch- 
ing "—one starts another, and a few excite many. Dur- 
ing the early camp-meeting period of Kentucky, when 
that State was on the border and civilization raw, it 
was customary to plant stakes throughout the praying 
grounds for support of those who caught the "jerks." 

3. But we are not to press the analogy of contagion 
too far. Some experimental psychologists of eminence 
plausibly advance the hypothesis that hysteria is not 
so much the disease of any organ as a general disturb- 
ance of nervous equilibrium. Says Myers : " Hysteria 
is not a lesion but a displacement ; it is a withdrawal 
of certain nervous energies from the plane of the pri- 
mary personality, but those energies still potentially 
subsist, and they can again be placed by proper man- 
agement under the normal control." 

Janet insists that no amount of hysterical disturb- 
ance, however prolonged or profound, need be regarded 



120 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

as incurable. At present the most approved medical 
treatment is by hypnosis and suggestion. 

4. But better than cure is prevention. The hys- 
terical should receive early training in self-control. 
Moreover, it must be borne in mind that such tempera- 
ments morbidly crave notice, sympathy and attention. 
With them to cause an excitement, to stir a thrilling 
sensation, is simply an overmastering passion. Hence 
the need of systematic repression and sympathetic 
neglect. When a " crisis " approaches, incredulity, in- 
difference, contempt and even sarcasm are indicated. 
Indeed, it may be added that in chorea as v/ell as in 
hysteria, and likewise in all purely nervous diseases, 
observation of symptoms and unnecessary sympathy 
aggravate the evil. Nervous movements should never 
be commented upon nor even noticed ; and if medi- 
cally treated, it should be done, if possible, without 
the patient's learning the fact. 



CHAPTER XXL 

CRIMIJS^ALITY. 

1. Traces of criminality may be found among 
animals — witness the " rogue elephant," which, once 
a member of some herd and now driven forth by the 
others, becomes morose, treacherous and murderous, 
much to be feared not only by men but also by its 
former associates. 

2. Ellis defines criminality as a " failure to live up 
to the standard recognized as binding by the commu- 
nity. The criminal is an individual whose organiza- 



CRIMINALITY. 121 

tion makes it difficult or impossible to live in accord- 
ance with this standard, and easy to risk the penalties 
of acting antisocially." 

3. As such organizations are sure to occur, crimi- 
nality has ever been a marked characteristic of all 
social life among each race of men and in every age. 
No moral earnestness in any community, no political 
wisdom of any school of statesmen, has sufficed to 
eradicate these dark blots on human nature. " Per- 
sistency and inevitability are their most perplexing 
features. 

4. There are distinct kinds as well as many degrees 
of criminality. We have the criminal of passion, the 
occasional criminal, the habitual and the congenital. 
This variation depends upon the causes of aberration, 
and these causes are immediate and remote. 

5. The immediate causes may be viewed psycho- 
logically or pathologically. 

(1) Viewed psychologically, they are : 

(a) Overmastering passions yoked with selfishness 
of disposition. This gives us the criminal of passion. 

(b) A weak will and failure of principle. This 
gives us the criminal of occasion. 

(c) When these two causes combine — strong pas- 
sions and weak will — the habitual criminal results. 

(2) Viewed pathologically, the causes are : 

(a) Nerve defect. Nearly all criminals are de- 
ficient in sensitiveness of end organs, except in matters 
of sharpness of vision. In mental and moral endow- 
ment they are almost universally deficient. 

(b) Nerve disease, occasioning unhealthy action of 
nerve centers. Hardened criminals are generally dis- 
eased with far-reaching constitutional ailments, and it 

9 



122 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

is usually easy in post mor terns to discover serious brain 
lesions. 

6. The remote causes are : 

(1) Atavism, or reversion to ancestral types. Ellis 
remarks that our own criminals frequently resemble 
in physical and psychical characters the normal indi- 
viduals of a lower race. These abnormal natures are 
simply organizations out of date, that in an early sav- 
age state would have proved current as good citizens. 

(2) Inherited virus, especially alcoholism, insanity 
and idiocy in parents. Indeed, criminality in this 
form is merely hereditary disease, which descends in 
moral scrofula, a horrid aptitude for evil-doing, from 
parent to child. We need only cite the case of the 
infamous Jukes family. The frightful story begins 
in the drunkenness, idleness and profligacy of one 
family, and continues through five subsequent gener- 
ations, tracing the careers of seven hundred and nine 
of the twelve hundred descendants, who were for the 
most part criminals and prostitutes, vagabonds and 
paupers. Of all the men, not twenty were skilled 
workmen, and ten of these learned their trade in 
prison. One hundred and eighty received outdoor 
relief to an aggregate of eight hundred years record- 
ed, and of (probably) twenty-three hundred years in 
all, at a cost to the public of one million dollars. Of 
the seven hundred and nine, seventy-six were crimi- 
nals, committing one hundred and fifteen proved of- 
fenses. More than half of the women for six gener- 
ations were notoriously unchaste. 

(3) Failure of education, leaving the child the vic- 
tim of idleness, poverty and contempt. 

(4) Unfavorable environment, by which is meant 



CRIMINALITY. 123 

overcrowding, vicious and criminal surroundings, in- 
sufficient and unwholesome food, and all those con- 
ditions not sanitary which breed uncleanliness, im- 
modesty, rudeness and disease, 

(5) Excessive luxury, pampering the passions, 
encouraging selfishness, enfeebling self-control and 
diseasing the body, may bring about like results. So- 
ciety has been not badly likened to a mug of beer, the 
froth on the top and the dregs at the bottom. 

7. All criminality tends to assume an infectious 
and contagious character. The evil act of one dull 
nature shows to other dull natures a line of least re- 
sistance for criminal instinct, and one evil-doer begets 
many. Thus crimes often seem " catching " ; they 
come in local visitations, and prevail in certain places 
as veritable epidemics, threatening the very existence 
of society. 

It is quite a common occurrence for epidemics of 
suicide to break out in regiments of the French army, 
and it has become customary, on first symptoms of this 
mania, to remove the body of troops so afflicted to some 
distant region in order to divert attention and improve 
the general sanitary condition. Dr. F. W. Eussell has 
stated that a lady patient of his, on reading a sensa- 
tional newspaper account of the suicide of a drunkard, 
became possessed of the idea, and in a few days took 
her own life. Another, a friend of both parties, caught 
the dreadful contagion, and followed in the same awful 
course of folly; At least two cases, and probably three, 
attended by circumstances perfectly hideous, one in 
Australia and one in the West, have been directly 
traceable to the Whitechapel horrors, perpetrated by 
the wretch who signed himself " Jack the Eipper." 



124 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

8. Where conditions favor, as in large cities, a 
criminal class — professional assailants of society, from 
whose ranks the prisons are regularly supplied, and 
who admire and emulate everything base because it 
is base — comes to the front. 

9. There is also a literature of vice and crime, yel- 
low-covered romances, dime novels, police gazettes, and 
daily newspapers, pandering to prurient imagiDations, 
in minute description picturing the criminal as a hero, 
and furnishing to dull, vulgar minds the needed de- 
tails for felonious action, all highly stimulant of brutal 
desires and purposes. We may be sure that, could the 
criminal items of the daily press be expunged, the rate 
of felonies would go down one half. 

10. One of the most prominent features of the law- 
breaking temperament is its levity. The deep-plan- 
ning villains of romance have no existence in real life. 
Milton's magnificent Satan is a mere poet's dream. 
Criminals are often cunning but never wise : thought- 
less, illogical, the victims of a monstrous egotism, blown 
hither and thither by gusts of passion, they are lighter 
than vanity, their mental processes contemptible, their 
conclusions inconsequential, and all their conduct per- 
vaded by an insane unreasonableness. They are sel- 
dom personally or mentally interesting, and generally 
dull, gross, repulsive and incapable. 

11. The remedies are : 

(1) Improved compulsory sanitation. We quar- 
antine cholera, vaccinate against smallpox and main- 
tain expensive boards of health. It has come to be 
viewed as a public duty to guarantee to citizens the 
conditions of bodily health ; and government is deemed 
society in its preservative and self -regulative functions. 



CRIMINALITY. 125 

It follows that we owe it to the poor and ignorant, and 
as well to the luxurious, to regulate their methods of 
life in the interests of a moral sanitation. To prevent 
overcrowding, debasing poverty and discontent among 
the poor, and no less enfeebling luxury among the rich, 
is the right and duty of society. Cleanliness, decency, 
sobriety, industry and self-restraint should be, and in 
time will be, enforced upon all citizens. 

(2) Thorough education. The claim recently and 
often made that a large number of criminals are edu- 
cated, is utterly groundless. Superintendent Brock- 
way, of the Elmira Eeformatory, declares that he has 
labored over criminals in prisons for over forty years, 
and can count on the fingers of one hand all the edu- 
cated men he has found among them. 

Education is a powerful preventive. Our public- 
school system should reach down lower, and take the 
very infant into its care on the plan of the public nur- 
series, and thus the day nursery for babes should be 
the primary department. The secondary should be 
the kindergarten for children, especially of the poor. 
Education should be compulsory, and when the little 
one enters what is now called the primary, it should 
be well along in private or public training. The child 
should graduate from the grammar school with some- 
thing more than book learning, and rather in every 
wise prepared for useful grapple with the stern prob- 
lem of life. In short, education should train health- 
fully all the various nerve centers, not only those of 
the cerebrum but also of the entire cerebro-spinal 
column. 

(3) Social philanthropy, which should be personal, 
long-suffering and discriminating. Beggary can be 



126 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

entirely repressed simply by an organized system of 
pxiyate relief, and at remarkably low cost, as is shown 
in the successful working of voluntary associations, 
called Union Eelief, in New England. 

Stealing and robbery disappear in proportion as 
wise and Just laws regulating property are enacted 
and enforced. 

And vice is very amenable to the influence of pure 
example and religious appeal. 

12. The future of criminality can be prognosti- 
cated. It is not likely that atavism and occasional 
crime and the crime of passion will ever be elimi- 
nated. Inheritable virus, however, and habitual and 
professional wrong-doing ought to succumb to im- 
proved sanitation, wiser methods of education, and 
the elimination of those hard social laws which now 
work to reduce many to the level of the brutes. 

13. One ought to distinguish between guilt and 
criminality. The former is an ethical, the latter a 
scientific, fact. Guilt may or may not be criminal ; 
crime may or may not be guilty. Many a man who 
breaks no human law, and is adored of the community, 
has on his record " a damned spot " that all the waters 
of earth may not wash out; and many a hideous 
malefactor is innocent as the babe unborn. 

Hence a just judgment of the criminal is exceed- 
ingly difficult. Several principles may, however, be 
applied safely, 

(1) Depraved heredity is palliative and not cumu- 
lative of guilt. If the fathers ate sour grapes and 
the children's teeth are set on edge, so much the worse 
for the fathers ; the guilt is theirs. The children are 
to be pitied ; their freedom is thereby crippled. 



CRIMINALITY. 127 

(3) Unfavorable environment, also, is palliative of 
guilt. One is not worse because surroundings have 
been bad, but relatively better in the eye of justice. 
One's freedom has been compelled. 

(3) Guilt concerns the exercise of the will, within 
its limitations and possibilities. Doubtless criminals 
are generally and greatly to blame ; but we are prone 
to judge over harshly. " Let him that thinketh he 
standeth take heed lest he fall." 



PAET II. 



MIND IN DETAIL. 

SECTION I. 
THE SENSOKY AND MOTOE END OEGANS. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE EVOLUTION OF E:N^D ORGANS. 

1. Irritability and contractility are primary 
functions of protoplasm, and hence in the lowest 
forms we have potentialities of that sense and motion 
found in the highest ; for in the progress of evolution 
it is the irritability which expands into the nervous 
system and the contractility which is built up into 
the muscle machine. The two systems, the irritable 
and the contractile— that is, the sensory and the motor 
— develop in harmony and mutual dependence, the 
ready instruments of the ever - expanding psychic 
factor. 

2. End organs are the results of this process of 
specialization, and hence are either of the irritable or 
of the contractile order — that is, either nervous or 
muscular, sensory or motor. At the very beginning 



THE EVOLUTION OP END ORGANS. 129 

of specialization they may be both, but this only in 
the lowest forms. They are evolved to mediate be- 
tween mind and both the outer and inner material 
world. 

3. While protoplasm at its lowest does not see, hear, 
smell, nor taste, it is probably gifted with feeling, 
which we may conceive of as a dull, dim, perhaps only 
subconsciousness of itself and of the general effect 
upon it of environment. This primary feeling is the 
foreshadowing of sensation, and very likely similar to 
what in ourselves we name general sense. 

Corresponding to this primary feeling is the volun- 
tary action of rude forms, the mere self-change of po- 
sition within a cell wall or in the open by a streaming 
of molecules or by elastic contraction and extension of 
the entire shape. The power of self-movement fore- 
shadows all organs of action. 

4. The earliest and rudest end organs are the false 
feet, lashes, whips and tentacles of protophytes and 
protozoa, already sufficiently described. These are at 
once irritable and contractile, of the nervous and of the 
muscular orders — that is, both sensory and motor — for 
they not only serve as limbs, they are also organs of 
touch. It must, however, be remembered that this 
primary touch is quite different from what we ex- 
perience as such in ourselves. It is a crude forerun- 
ner of several senses, and as truly a prophecy of our 
smell and taste as of our tactile and pressure sensibili- 
ties ; for its lowly possessors seek and find appropriate 
food, seemingly, by the aid of these simple members. 
Moreover, even our own smell and taste organs are but 
exquisitely delicate kinds of touch. The order of 
evolution undoubtedly was this touch of a rude sort, 



130 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

followed by the same specialized, for heat, for smell, 
and later for taste. 

5. The appearance of controlling or nerve cells 
must have given to this movement a great impetus. 
The sensory system separating from the motor under- 
went subdivision and elaboration. Temperature end 
organs must have come early, and have succeeded the 
general sense of hot and cold. Sight and hearing 
were at first less necessary, and received a compara- 
tively late expansion. The muscular sense and mus- 
cular end organs were of course sequent to the de- 
velopment of the muscle machine. 

6. The design of sensory end organs in high forms 
and low is to acquaint mind with its physical environ- 
ment without the body and within. This sensory en- 
vironment is the play of forces upon living matter — 
of light, heat, electricity, chemical affinity, gravity, 
pressure, etc. Sensory end organs are the effort of 
mind to interpret, counteract and master these 
forces. 

7. This result is accomplished in all the higher 
forms by specializing superficial cells to receive one or 
another kind of stimulus, which cells in front elongate 
into a hair or thread and behind are connected with 
the sensory nerve centers. The apparatus is merely 
a hairlike process extending outward and connected 
by a sensitive cell with a nervous filament extending 
inward. The function of the exterior thread is to 
gather up the stimulus and convey it to the sensitive 
cell; in this the stimulus is converted into nerve 
force, which speeds to the brain, where the excitation 
becomes a sensation. Even the wonderful senses of 
man are only an elaboration of this simple structure, 



THE EVOLUTION OF END ORGANS. 131 

which proves ample to meet all the urgent require- 
ments of his complicated organization ; and much 
that we associate with them in thought is merely me- 
chanical, only designed to bring to bear the stimulus 
in the most effective way upon the sensitive thread. 
Noses, ears, eyes and tongues are mere mechanical aids 
to the vital operation of the concealed end organs. 

8. The sensitive cells must be conceived of as 
loaded with explosives, and their stimulation is a kind 
of discharge, releasing energy. Some are fired by a 
slight pressure, some by the molecular vibration of 
odorous or sapid particles, some by undulations of air, 
and others by the waves of an ethereal surf. Hence 
we may classify the end organs according to the spe- 
cies of stimulus : 

Mechanical Touch. 

Chemical Taste and smell. 

Physical Sight, hearing, temperature. 

Muscular t . . . Muscular sense. 

Vital Vital sense. 

9. It will be noticed that stimulus is in nearly all 
cases vibratory. This is beyond question with sight, 
temperature and hearing ; but it is scarcely less cer- 
tain with smell and taste, with the muscular and with 
the vital senses. Upon this fact depends the quantity 
and the quality of the impression. The form of the 
vibratory curve determines its quality, its amplitude 
the quantity. 

10. General sense is described by Henle as "the 
sum total or the not yet unraveled chaos of sensations 
that from every point of the body are being inces- 
santly transmitted to the sensorium." Weber defines 
it as "an internal sensibility, an inward touch that 



132 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

imparts information to the sensorium concerning the 
mechanical and chemico-organic state of the skin, the 
mucous and serous membranes, the viscera, the mus- 
cles and the articulated parts." Oondillac called this 
'* the basic feeling of existence." 

It is by general feeling that we know our bodies as 
our own, and its sensibility forms the physical basis of 
personality. It gives us sense of comfort or discom- 
fort, of malaise or healthful vigor. 

If general sense have any end organs of its own, 
they must be very simple, and probably nothing more 
than terminating fibrils passing through minute sen- 
sitive cells, and which, starting out from the brain, end 
everywhere in the human body. 

11.^ When the general sense is diseased or dis- 
turbed, hallucinations result, bearing chiefly upon the 
physical personality. A man imagines that he is two 
men, lying in two beds ; or that he has long since 
died, and is but an inert thing. Esquirol describes 
a woman whose skin was completely insensible, and 
who believed that the devil had carried ofE her body. 
Ribot tells of a young man who, while maintaining 
that he had been dead for two years, expressed his 
perplexity in the following words : " I exist, but out- 
side of real material life. Everything in me is me- 
chanical, and takes place unconsciously." 



THE END ORGANS OF TOUCH. 133 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE EKD ORGANS OE TOUCH. 

1. These, as we have seen, appeared early in the 
evolutionary movement, and are found in very low 
forms. With the latter they may subserve the pur- 
poses of the temperature and the smell senses. The 
hydroid polyps, the Medusce^ and the sea anemones 
have touch tentacles, usually arranged about the 
mouth. Sea urchins are equipped with touch rods 
and suctorial feet. Crustaceans and insects have touch 
hairs, often with a sensitive cell at the base. In the 
vertebrates the nervous apparatus is simply of naked 
fibrils lost amid the cells of the skin or of sensitive 
bulbs of connective tissue in which nerves terminate. 
In the great majority of fishes feeling is limited to the 
lips, to the fins and to special members called barbels. 
The tongue is the chief organ of touch in serpents and 
lizards. All reptiles that possess climbing powers de- 
velop the sense in their feet. Birds have touch papillae 
on the soles of their feet to impart security of grasp. 

2. In human beings touch is specialized solely for 
the appreciation of mass pressure ; and the organs are 
numerous and in kind somewhat varied. These latter 
are located in the skin (integumentary or mucous), 
and consist of naked fibrils which end amid the cells 
or of fibrils ending in corpuscles. 

The tactile corpuscles are of three kinds : 
(1) Of Pacini, which are each a coating of many 
thin layers of connective tissue enveloping the termi- 
nation of a meduUated fiber, and are large (^ to ^ 



134 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

inch in diameter). They occur most frequently in 
the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. 

(2) Of Krause, which are small capsules of con- 
nective tissue in whose center fibrils terminate in a 
coiled mass or a swollen extremity {^^-^ to t^^oo" inch). 
They are found in the conjunctiva in the tongue, the 
lips, etc. 

(3) Of Wagner (^-^ to -^-^ inch), situate in- the 
papillae of the skin. Within these, fibrils form two or 
three coils, and finally join together in loops ; they are 
most numerous in the papillae of the finger ends. 
Meisner counted four hundred papillae in one fiftieth 
of a square inch on the third phalange of the index 
finger, and found Wagner's corpuscles in one hundred 
and eight of them. 

3. The special function of the corpuscles has not 
been determined ; it is, however, highly probable that 
the protecting connective tissue modifies the impulse 
of pressure received, so as to convey it to nerve termi- 
nations in a form better fitted for delicate and signifi- 
cant excitation than in case of naked fibrils. But they 
are not necessary for simple touch, and if no bulbar 
terminals occur in any part, still even there will be 
found sensitiveness to pressure. 

4. The human body is covered with what are called 
pressure spots— that is, with areas marking the pres- 
ence of some kind of touch organ. These are defined 
experimentally by pressing against the skin at every 
different point a sharp instrument. Light pressure 
excites a lively sensation, often accompanied by a sense 
of being tickled ; heavy pressure arouses pain as if of 
a grain of sand forced into the surface. Between the 
spots the point will cause feeling of contact but not of 



THE END ORGANS OF TOUCH. 135 

pressure. Undoubtedly fibrils terminate underneath 
the pressure spots. 

5. The intensity and therefore the delicacy of the 
sense of touch depends upon the thickness of the cellu- 
lar layer and the form and number of the papilla. The 
two points of a pair of dividers can be distinguished by 
the tongue, if only one twenty-fourth inch apart ; while 
on the cheek they may be one inch separate, and on 
the back three inches, and still give rise to only one 
impression. The tip of the tongue and ends of the 
fingers oJBCer surfaces crowded with touch organs and 
highly sensitive to pressure. There are men in whom 
this gift is so exquisitely discriminating that they can 
tell simply by feeling the make and grade of flour. 
Sleight-of-hand experts possess this tactile dexterity to 
a very remarkable degree. 

6. Touch is one of the spatial senses. There is a 
field of touch as there is a field of vision. Those who 
are born blind, through touch have definite space con- 
ceptions; the three dimensions are correctly appre- 
hended. Indeed, in case of congenital blindness, touch, 
aided by the muscular sense, receives emphasis and 
plays a much more important part in life than when 
sight can be relied upon, and to some extent replaces 
the latter. 

Still, even as a spatial sense, touch is far more re- 
liable in its resulting sensations, perceptions and judg- 
ments, for having the assistance of vision. 

7. In the blind, in the hypnotized and sometimes 
in the normal, touch attains exquisite sensitiveness. A 
Swiss blind man, among a group of w^ood-carving 
peasants, learned to carve in wood faces of men and 
women with a marvelous accuracy. 



136 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

MUSCULAK SE:^SE. 

1. This phrase describes a certain sensibility con- 
nected with the muscles, the stimulus being of two 
kinds — either an innervation of some muscle or a re- 
sistance by environment to such innervation. 

Hence muscular sense is either of movements or of 
resistance. It keeps mind en rapport with its motory 
apparatus and cognizant of the obstacles encountered 
by its own attempted effort. 

It must be carefully distinguished from the senses 
of mere contact and of mere pressure. Bring your 
hand alongside a book and you are in contact with it. 
Lay your hand flat upon a table and place the book 
upon your palm, and you feel pressure. Now, if you 
will lift the hand and so raise the book, you shall have 
muscular sense of resistance, as well as muscular sense 
of the innervation necessary to accomplish the work. 

Landry tells of a workman " whose fingers and 
hands were insensible to all contact, pain and tem- 
perature, but whose sense of muscular activity v/as 
everywhere alert. If I made him shut his eyes and 
placed a large object in his hand, he was astonished 
that he could not shut it ; but his only idea was that 
there was some obstacle to the movement of his fingers. 
I secretly tied to his wrists a kilogramme weight ; he 
thought some one was pulling him by the arm." 

2. In sense of muscular movement, the stimulation 
is probably central and occasioned by acts of innerva- 
tion in central nerve cells. Sense of resistance, how- 



MUSCULAR SENSE. 137 

ever, receives its impressions through fibrils directed 
everywhere upon the muscles, and these are the true 
muscular end organs. 

3. The muscular is one of the three spatial senses, 
by which we come to know the material universe ; its 
impressions acquaint us with the density, hardness 
and elasticity of matter. Indeed, sight and touch 
would fail in much of their usefulness were they not 
supplemented by the motility of the hand and eye 
muscles and the nice discrimination by successive 
movements of position, amount of innervation and 
force of resistances. 

These spatial properties of muscular sensibility are 
greatly enhanced in value by that keen judgment of 
durations which accompanies it. Thus we can esti- 
mate distances by the time it takes us to traverse them 
under allowance for the force of resistance. 

4. The diseases of this kind of sensibility lead to 
curious results. Demeaux tells of a woman who, los- 
ing all sense of resistance, though retaining sense of 
innervation, could will muscular action, but neither 
could she know the nature of the actual movement 
nor could she even judge as to the position of her 
limbs. Persons whose muscles have been anaesthetized 
can not tell in what position their members are or have 
been placed. Carpenter describes the case of a woman 
whose sense of resistance in one arm was lost, while 
the power of innervation was retained ; she could hold 
her baby only so long as she gazed steadily upon her 
arm, vision taking the place of the lost sense in giving 
the requisite guidance to the sense of effort. 

5. Muscular sense can be educated and attain won- 
derful keenness and precision ; hence the sleight-of- 

10 



138 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

hand conjurer, the acrobat, the equilibrist and the 
tumbler. In hypnosis it may become extremely alert 
and discriminating, as in the case of the lady who 
could select any one of twenty silver coins by poising 
them on a finger and so weighing them. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE EKB ORGAKS OF SMELL. 

1. Odors are of value to the psychic factor thereby 
to gain acquaintance with environment, because ma- 
terial substances all readily give off superficial mole- 
cules and vary greatly in chemical quality. Odor end 
organs need to be specialized for reception of impres- 
sions conveyed by the chemical or physical energies of 
such molecules. How these energies are delivered so 
as to discharge the loaded sensitive cell, science has 
not yet explained ; there is, however, little doubt that 
the impact is vibratory, and either of ethereal waves of 
low rapidity or rhythmic movement peculiar to the 
molecule in question. 

2. While something answering to the sense of smell 
must be possessed by even the lowest animals, the most 
simple apparatus for this purpose is found in the Me- 
duscBy in which we discover pitlike depressions lined 
with ciliated epithelium and supposed to be olfactory 
organs. Insects are abundantly provided with sensory 
hairs, knobs and cones on their antennae, often num- 
bering many thousands, which evidently are olfactory ; 
for if you amputate these structures or coat them with 
paraffin, the result is complete obtuseness to smell. A 



THE END ORGANS OF SMELL. 139 

similar equipment of olfactory hairs and tufts of hairs 
is found with the moUusks ; though snails, forming 
an exception, seem to smell — in part at least — with 
their horns. In fishes we have a highly vascular folded 
membrane, covered by cilia, lining one or two pits ; 
and most fishes are attracted to bait not by sight but 
by smell. Amphibians have paired internal cavities. 
In birds the external nostrils are simple perforations, 
but in the cavities the sensitive surface is increased by 
projections and folds. In the mammals the olfactory 
surface is enormously increased by a bony labyrinth, 
carved into projections and depressions and covered 
with sensitive membrane. 

The simple idea which is gradually elaborated in 
this series — the " motive," as a musician might say — is 
that of a single fibril exposed cautiously to contact 
with infinitesimal particles of substances fioating on 
the air or dissolved in water. In each of the thou- 
sands of olfactory hairs on the antennae of a bee there 
ends a fibril ; while in olfactory cavities of more elab- 
orate forms few or many such fibrils end in exposure. 
With the highest animals the structure, though still 
simple in its details, is extremely elaborate in multi- 
plication of fibrils and provision for air passages. 

3. In man the olfactory organs do not materially 
depart from those of his class, and are situated in the 
upper region of the nasal cavity, where there is an 
expansion. In this expansion there is a bony laby- 
rinth lined with a mucous membrane that is abun- 
dantly supplied with sensitive fibrils. Two cables 
from the brain — the first pair of cranial — divide into 
fibers, the fibrils of which end in sensitive cells ; these 
latter — spindle-shaped or columnar, with large nucleus 



140 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

— penetrate the epithelial layer, and on the outer sur- 
face terminate in threadlike processes. 

Smelling is excited chiefly on inspiration, and to 
be keen the air must be breathed in deep draughts ; 
and snuffing, by creating a partial vacuum in the nasal 
cavity and so increasing the amount of air drawn into 
the olfactory region, intensifies the sensation. The 
atmosphere had best be damp, and the mucous mem- 
brane concerned should be moist. When the threads 
are well covered with odorous matter or coated with 
mucus, as during an attack of catarrh, or when the 
nose is filled even with an odorous liquid, the sensa- 
tion ceases. 

4. Smell is excited by exceedingly minute particles 
of matter in the gaseous or vaporous condition floating 
in the air or the same dissolved in water. A grain of 
musk will scent an apartment for years, and at the end 
of that time no appreciable loss of weight can be de- 
tected. This accounts for the extraordinary acute- 
ness of smelling in certain animals, as the dog or the 
deer. 

Occasional instances of acuteness in men hint of 
the inexhaustible possibilities of the human nose, and 
-lead us to infer that the only reason we do not enjoy a 
sense of smell as keen and varied as our sight is the 
fact that human exigencies of life and growth have 
not required it. James Mitchell, born blind, deaf and 
dumb, chiefly depended on smell for keeping up con- 
nection with the outer world ; he readily observed the 
presence of a stranger in the room, and formed his 
opinions of persons apparently from their character- 
istic smells. Eelatively imperfect as our organs are, it 
is said that ^qq^ooo ^^ ^ milligramme of alcoholic ex- 



THE END ORGANS OF SMELL. 141 

tract of musk and 4 ^0000000 ^^ ^ milligramme of mer- 
captan can be perceived, while a current of air con- 
taining ^o-qVfo ^^ vapor of bromine excites a strong, 
unpleasant sensation. Humboldt declared of the 
Peruvian Americans that on the darkest night they 
could not merely perceive through smell the approach 
of a distant stranger, but could say whether he were 
Indian, negro or European. 

5. In animals, and to some extent in man, smell 
conveys knowledge as to direction of the exciting 
cause. Put your finger in water occupied by leeches 
and they seek it. Fishes will thus find bait they can 
not see. In man this peculiar gift usually lies dor- 
mant ; but that it exists appears in Braid's account of 
a lady who when hypnotized was so acute in smelling 
that she could, though blindfolded and at a distance 
of forty-six feet, follow a rose just as su.rely as a hound 
does a hare. 

6. The olfactory sense may prove a source of decep- 
tion. When covered with mucus in catarrh the nerve 
endings fail to respond to the strongest stimulus, and 
in certain diseased conditions they send false impres- 
sions to the brain — as when during a cold the author 
for several days smelt smoke and went about the house 
seeking fire. 

7. Science has not reduced to definite mathemat- 
ical, physical or even chemical relations the infinite 
possible varieties of olfactory impressions. As Wundt 
declares, these possess a " discrete manif oldness " 
which has an unknown arrangement. 



142 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

CHAPTEE XXVI. 

THE E]^D OKGAlSrS OF TASTE. 

1. Taste and smell are allied, and were originally 
indistinguishable ; and now in all low aquatic forms 
the difference is hardly, if at all, discernible. Still, 
some think they discover taste organs in fishes, and 
Morgan is confident that they can be found in the 
maxillae and probosces of insects, in minute pits sup- 
plied each with a taste hair. It is, however, more 
probable that taste organs have been recent in evolu- 
tionary liistory. First in the mammals do we discover 
clear evidence of a special apparatus, and even with 
these the sense of taste is introductory. Man himself 
in this regard is but where insects are in the matter of 
eyes, or where fishes seem to be in the matter of ears. 

2. The taste organs in man are situated princi- 
pally in the tongue. On the upper surface of the root 
of the tongue are found large papillae, called circum- 
vallate ; while on the tip and lateral margins may be 
seen other papillae named fungiform. In the epithe- 
lial lining of these bodies, at the sides of the circum- 
vallate, and at the sides and on the upper surfaces 
of the fungiform, are found gustatory buds. These 
open outward, and are ^ to -g-J-o inch in diameter. 
Shaped like a Florence flask, they are composed of 
two sets of cells — an outer, which lines the organ, and 
is made up of nucleated fusiform elements bent in- 
ward like the staves of a barrel, and an inner group, 
five to ten, also of nucleated cells, each pointed at the 
opening and branched below. The branched lower 



THE END ORGANS OF TASTE. 143 

ends of the latter are continuous with nerve fibrils 
from the gustatory cable. 

3. Taste is excited by soluble substances only, as 
the matter perceived must be minute enough to work 
its way into the terminal pores of the buds. Insolu- 
ble substances excite on the tongue only feelings of 
touch and temperature. Hence dryness of the mouth 
will lessen the sensation by preventing solution, and 
the neighboring secreting glands form an important 
part of the entire apparatus. 

4. We may therefore surmise that the stimulus is 
molecular in action, the motion of impact being either 
an ethereal vibration or some rhythmic physical move- 
ment. 

5. Taste seems a much more important function 
than it is, because constantly confused with touch and 
smell. A large part of what we call the taste of any- 
thing is its " feel " and its odor. A Shah of Persia 
once rebuked some^uropeans for eating with knives 
and forks ; he declared that the sense of taste began 
in the finger-tips (Hoffding). Blindfold the eyes 
and close the nose, and a slice of onion on the tongue 
will not be distinguished from a slice of apple. We 
all enjoy vanilla flavoring, but only the odor is per- 
ceived. When smell and touch are rigidly excluded, 
there remain as kinds of taste impressions only sweet, 
bitter, acid and saline. In short, the sense is incipient : 
it is clear that the exigencies of animal existence have 
not been such as to evolve its possibilities. There is 
nothing absolutely to forbid the gradual future multi- 
plication of kinds of taste impression. 

6. The intensity of gustatory impression depends 
upon the number of buds excited and the concentra- 



144: THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

tion of the solution, not to speak of attention. But 
with all conditions favorable, the sense seldom is keen. 
It is, however, occasionally so, as in the case of Valen- 
tin, who detected bitter in tofotfo" ^^ ^ solution of 
quinine. Moreover, it can be educated, as the nice 
discriminations of the professional tea- tasters show ; 
though in this case the dexterity, after all, is largel}^ 
of the olfactory sense. In subconscious conditions it 
is also often abnormally acute. 

7. Like all the other senses, it may delude. Gal- 
vanic stimulation of the tongue simulates food im- 
pressions. A draft of cool air excites on the tongue 
the taste of saltpeter. Acetate of lead may be mis- 
taken for sugar. 



OHAPTEE XXVII. 

THE TEMPERATUKE E:N^D OKGAIsrS. 

1. Mind perceives heat impressions through nerve 
fibrils terminating in the skin and mucous surfaces. 
The stimulus is to be sought in the invisible ethereal 
vibrations or heat rays which occur at the ultra-red 
end of the solar spectrum. The impact of this ethe- 
real surf upon the fibril cells occasions that discharge 
of loaded energies which constitutes temperature im- 
pression. 

2. These fibrils occasion corresponding cold and hot 
spots, which are minute and very numerous. The cold 
spots are sensitive to low, the hot to high temperature. 
Some parts of the human body are more plentifully 
supplied with the one than with the other. Thus the 
forehead and the back between the shoulders are ex- 



THE TEMPERATURE END ORGANS. 145 

tremely sensitive to cold, but only moderately so to 
heat, while the hands are equally excited by both con- 
ditions. 

3. The fibrils are telaesthetic, and may be influ- 
enced by a body radiating heat from afar, even though 
as distant as the sun. You may prove this by holding 
your hand near a hot stove, but the while protecting 
it by a dense screen. Remove the screen, and in the 
fraction of a second, and ere the heat of the hand is 
appreciably raised, there will be a strong stimulation 
of temperature end organs. 

4. There is a zero point at which fibrils produce no 
sensations. When they receive heat waves of any de- 
gree above this, the hot spots transmit inward the 
excitation of warmth ; when the heat waves fall below, 
the cold spots transmit the excitation of coldness. 

5. This zero point is variable ; it changes for dif- 
ferent parts of the body, according as they are or are 
not exposed, according as they are or are not well sup- 
plied with arterial blood, pursuant also to variations 
in the temperature of the air or of other bodies in con- 
tact. Thus it is higher in summer than in winter, in 
a hot room than in a cold one, etc. 

The adjustment of the zero point to surroundings 
depends, of course, upon the evaporation of perspira- 
tion and the circulation of the blood, but also upon a 
certain power of accommodation. Plunge the hand 
into warm water, and having kept it there a moment- 
put it into still warmer ; this latter will seem warm 
only until the zero point is adjusted to the new con- 
ditions. Then, if the hand be returned to the first basin, 
the water in this will seem cold, though but a few mo- 
ments before it gave quite the contrary impression. 



146 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

6. The fibril cells are most sensitive to changes 
lying near their own zero point. Intense cold and 
heat do not occasion impressions strong in proportion 
to the intensity ; indeed, overvigorous excitation, if 
prolonged, even reduces sensitiveness to slighter va- 
riations. 

7. Delicacy of discrimination depends upon the 
locality and extent of surfaces involved. Thus water, 
in which the whole hand is immersed, seems warmer 
than some of a higher temperature into which only 
one finger has been plunged. 

There is a limit, however, to this nicety of judg- 
ment ; as the heat rays of the solar spectrum give us 
no such discernment of qualities as that afforded by 
the light rays, we simply feel gradations of quantity. 
The heat sense lacks what in other senses we mean by 
color, pitch, savor, etc. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

SIGHT. 

1. The light organs receive impressions from the 
luminous portion of the spectrum, and are adapted to 
convert the ethereal surf that beats against the human 
body — hundreds of billions of waves a second — into 
nerve force, to travel to the nerve center for final ap- 
preciation by the psychic factor. 

Nature's method of accomplishing this great feat 
has been progressive ; hence — 

2. An evolutionary history. First came a general 
sensitiveness to light not localized. Among plants the 



SIGHT. 147 

desmids have a light sense, and are able thereby to 
find the sunshine, whether by some special organ or 
by general sensibility we can not yet say. The earth- 
worm is distinctly sensitive to light, and can even dis- 
tinguish between colors, though quite eyeless, prefer- 
ring red to green, and green to blue. The same is 
true of the blind proteus of the grottoes of Carniola. 
Some animals provided with eyes— the newt, for exam- 
ple — can distinguish between light and darkness by 
the general surface of the skin. 

The next stage is of pigment spots. Certain plants 
in the motile form possess pigment spots as the organs 
of a light sense (as Pandorina), These spots are the 
rude beginnings of eyes. Low animal forms also have 
such pigment spots to serve the same end of light-seek- 
ing. Euglena viridis is a case in point. 

Eyes proper began in eye-specks — in the worms, 
MeduscB^ etc. These are simply expansions of an optic 
nerve into a brush of fibrils, which are fronted by a 
transparent medium, the whole shut in by a rudi- 
mentary lens. Eye-specks afford only a luminous im- 
pression, without distinct vision. 

More fully developed are the ocelli or single eyes 
of spiders and kindred insects ; these are endowed 
with a lens, a transparent medium back of it, optic 
fibrils, a layer of pigment and optic ganglia ; and they 
no doubt afford something like true vision. 

In the insects, and also in the crustaceans, sin- • 
gle eyes — a great many of them, often thousands — are 
compressed and combined into compound eyes, which 
consist of transparent conelike bodies, arranged in a 
radiate manner against the inner surface of the cornea, 
with which their bases are united, while their apices 



148 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

are connected with the ends of the opposite fibrils. 
Vision in this case gives a distinct image of the field 
in mosaic. 

In the vertebrates we find large, single eyes, in 
which the optical rivals the nerve complexity to pro- 
vide perfect organs of sight. An eye, so perfected, is 
a dark chamber with a self-adjusting lens and a sen- 
sitive nervous screen. There is time here to dwell 
only upon the retina or screen, where. the real end or- 
gans of vision are located, though the entire apparatus 
of diaphragm, ciliary muscles, muscles of accommoda- 
tion, eyebrows, eyelids, lachrymal glands, muscles of 
the eyeball, etc., might well occupy many hours of pa- 
tient consideration. 

3. The retina or sensitive screen is the terminal 
membranous expansion of the optic nerve within the 
globe of the eye ; it consists of nerve cells and fibers 
imbedded in a spongy, supporting connective tissue. 
It is the inner tunic of the orb, and is composed of no 
less than ten different layers. It begins on the inner 
surface of the choroid, with a mosaic pavement of pig- 
ment cells ; resting on these is a layer of rods and 
cones, more than one hundred millions to the square 
inch. In front of the rods and cones are successive 
strata of nerve elements — fibers, nuclei and cells — 
connected with them. Foremost of all are multipolar 
nucleated nerve cells, joined by a network of fibrils to 
the optic cable, which enters the retina at a point of 
slight projection, near the center of the posterior hemi- 
spherical surface on the nasal side. The entire thick- 
ness of the retina is one thirtieth of an inch. At the 
center of the posterior hemispherical surface is a de- 
pressed yellow spot of superior sensitiveness, which is 



SIGHT. 149 

the place of clearest yision, the organ of visual atten- 
tion. The neighboring elevation, where the optic nerve 
penetrates the retina to distribute itself over the inner 
surface, is, on the contrary, devoid of visual elements 
and totally blind. It is believed that the eye distin- 
guishes all the colors of the spectrum only at the yel- 
low spot, which, in consequence, is termed trichro- 
matic — that is, sensitive to the three primary colors 
and all their combinations. Not far from the yellow 
spot the retina becomes only bichromatic, and is 
green blind ; while on the periphery color is entirely 
indistinguishable, and only light and shade are ob- 
served. 

The yellow spot has within itself an area yet more 
restricted of most acute sensibility, only y^-g- of an 
inch in diameter, containing no less than two thou- 
sand cones. 

4. Though the mechanics of vision is perfectly 
clear, its physiology is not well understood. The for- 
mation of the image on the retina is in accordance 
with well-demonstrated properties of light ; but how 
the retina converts each point of light into a nerve 
impression, to speed its way to the brain, we do not 
know. The fibers and cells of the retina are them- 
selves indifferent to light stimulation, unless of dan- 
gerous intensity. The rods and cones, in connection 
with the pigment cells, receive and register the ether 
waves, but just how has not yet been discovered. The 
process seem^ to be photo-chemical. The fibrils re- 
ceive their stimulus surely not from the light directly, 
but from the layer of rods and cones. The yellow 
spot is most sensitive, because here the cones are most 
numerous and delicate, while the blind spot is entirely 



150 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

insensitive, because it fails utterly in rods and cones. 
An image large enough to cover one cone only is visi- 
ble, and Lockyer claims that the color of a star throw- 
ing such an image is discernible. 

5. A line drawn from the yellow spot to the center 
of the pupil forms the axis of the eye, and gives the 
direction of perfect vision. As the yellow spot is the 
organ of attention, and therefore of research and dis- 
covery, it is the only part of the retina that can be said 
to examine anything. The mechanical contrivances 
of the eyes are largely designed to bring the object of 
visual attention upon this most sensitive portion of 
the screen. 

6. The retinal images are small — only about -^js 
of the surface area of the object, at nine inches 
from the eye. The arc they subtend, the center of 
the lens being the center of the circle, is called the 
angle of vision. 

7. The minimum limit of vision is conditioned 
by the distance of the retinal elements one from the 
other. Two stars can not be distinguished by the 
naked eye if nearer together than sixty seconds ; this 
corresponds to a visual angle whose arc subtends the 
least distance between the cones in the yellow spot. A 
line not much more than subtending this angle ap- 
pears uneven and knotted, because it falls at points on 
only parts of retinal elements, and lines of less diam- 
eter are not seen at all. Glass can be spun so fine as 
not to be seen even when magnified by the utmost 
powers of the microscope, and parallel lines can be 
drawn on glass that before all our efforts remain quite 
indistinguishable. 

8. The impression made by light upon the retina 



SIGHT. 151 

not only remains during the time of stimulation, but 
afterward for about one eighth of a second ; so that 
two luminous impressions no farther apart than this 
interval appear continuous as one. A pin- wheel light- 
ed and rapidly revolving appears as an unbroken circle 
of fire. 

9. The excitability of the retina is soon exhausted : 
a bright light presently renders the part aroused tem- 
porarily insensitive. If the bright light be of one 
color, the part excited becomes insensitive to that 
color, but not to other rays of the spectrum. Look 
at a bright red cloth intently, and if the eyes be sud- 
denly averted to a white surface a greenish spot will 
appear; in this case the capacity to see red is weak- 
ened, and only its complementary color in the white is 
perceived. 

10. In some persons the necessary apparatus for 
discriminating colors^ accurately is lacking : they see 
no red or no green or no yellow. 

11. Illusory impressions may be made on the ret- 
ina. Press the closed eyeball on one side, and a light 
image appears on a dark ground. A blow will cause 
one to " see stars." Electrical stimulation induces 
light impressions of various sorts and degrees. The 
eyes are therefore the seats of possible illusions, and 
may become to the mind the sources of serious de- 
lusion. 

12. Vision, through individual or ancestral educa- 
tion, can be brought up to a high degree of acuteness, 
and the same result may temporarily be secured by 
hypnosis. Jackdaws will perceive a hawk and show 
alarm when the sky is perfectly clear to human eyes. 
The author knew a young girl who possessed talent 



152 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

for the painting of minute subjects so elaborate in 
detail that the result could be magnified four diam- 
eters without suffering in proportion or color. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

HEARING. 

1. The end organs of hearing are constructed to ac- 
quaint mind Vvdth its environment by means of sounds, 
and the sensitive cells are discharged by undulations 
proceeding from sonorous bodies through elastic me- 
dia. As sound is occasioned by the vibrations of 
bodies which, because they can vibrate, are called 
sonorous, and is transmitted in undulations through 
suitable media — air, wood, water, or any elastic sub- 
stance — we may expect to find the terminal filament, 
in this case, an elastic hair. 

2. The evolutionary history has been very striking. 

Loxodes rostrum^ a beautiful ciliated infusory, ex- 
hibits along the back a row of small auditory vesicles, 
which probably afford a general sense of undulation, 
without discernment of pitch and timbre. 

The Medtisce^ in connection with their double ring 
of nerve matter, possess sense organs, which function, 
in some species, as eyes and in others as ears ; in the 
latter case, projecting tentacles are furnished with 
otoliths and vibratory hairs. In some species the 
tentacle lies in a vesicle imbedded in the gelatinous 
substance of the disk and close to its edge. 

Among invertebrates, auditory organs are very pro- 
miscuously located : in the foot of bivalves, in the an- 



HEARING. 153 

tennules of lobsters, the forelegs of crickets and ants, 
the abdomen of locusts, the balancers of flies, the tail 
of My sis. These generally involve one or more sacs, 
with otoliths and vibratory hairs. Sonorous vibrations 
are communicated to the sac either directly through 
hard parts or by a membrane exposed to the surround- 
ing medium. If vibratory hairs be present, pitch is 
perceived, otherwise only intensity. Hensen, through 
a microscope, watched the two auditory sacs in the 
tail of a mysis, while a musical scale near at hand was 
sounded, and he found that special hairs responded to 
particular notes. When a note was sounded, the cor- 
responding hair was thrown into such violent vibration 
as to disappear. 

Among the vertebrates, the organ becomes increas- 
ingly complicated with evolution into higher forms. 

In the lower fishes there is a simple sac ; then, there 
is a sac — now called a vestibule — and a semicircular 
canal, each of which, filled with lymph and otoliths, 
receives filaments of the auditory nerve. In the lam- 
prey there are two semicircular canals. In the higher 
fishes there are three semicircular canals, and the ves- 
tibule enlarges into a double sac. In amphibians, rep- 
tiles and birds there are always three canals, and con- 
joined to these appears a new sac called the' cochlea ; 
there is also increasing perfection of apparatus, in 
middle and external ears, for bringing to bear effect- 
ively the atmospheric undulations. 

3- Omitting all minute description of mechanical 
contrivance, the internal ear of man is composed of 
two membranous sacs, filled with lymph and floating 
in lymph, inclosed in cavities of hard bone forming 
part of the skull. These sacs are connected by open- 
11 



154 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

ings with one another, and by membranes with the 
middle ear, and in their interior contain small, mobile, 
hard bodies — the otoliths. The membranous cochlea, 
which is to hearing what the retina is to sight, is a 
double tube wound about a spiral bone. On its inner 
surface, extending into the lymph, is a most remark- 
able series of threads, called the fibers of Corti, con- 
necting tufts of hairs with fibrils of the auditory nerve ; 
there are about three thousand of these, each with its 
tuft of hairs, and they are very generally believed to 
form a keyboard, and to be a musical instrument ca- 
pable of responding to the utmost niceties of pitch 
and timbre. Whether the fibers vibrate, or the con- 
nected hairs, has not been decided ; it is, however, prob- 
able that the hairs vibrate, and that the fibers are the 
converting sensitive cells. 

4. As to the functions of the different parts, it is 
undoubtedly safe to say that the outer ear conveys 
sound vibrations to the membrane of the drum, whose 
throbbings are passed on by three little bones (ossi- 
cles — the mallet, anvil and stirrup) to the mem^brane 
of the oval window, which, itself pulsating, sets the 
lymph of the labyrinth into rhythmic motion; this 
rhythm throws into undulation the lymph of vestibule 
and cochlea, which breaks upon the nerve endings like 
the sea on a pebbly beach, increasing the intensity of 
their effect by lifting and dropping the otoliths, just 
as a surf lifts and drops sand and shingle. The last 
vibrations in the series are those of the elastic hairs, 
which sensitive cells convert into nerve energy and 
send to the brain. 

It must be remembered that sound waves may 
reach the inner ear, though very imperfectly, through 



HEARING. 155 

the bony parts of the skull and through the Eusta- 
chian tubes. 

5. An auditory sensation lasts a short time after 
the cessation of the exciting cause ; hence, if sounds 
follow one another with sufficient rapidity, they ap- 
pear as one and continuous. There must, however, 
be at least thirty per second to secure perfect conti- 
nuity of impression. If these successive sounds be 
caused by regular and periodic impressions they form 
musical tones. There must be not less than thirty 
nor more than twenty thousand per second to insure 
perception. 

6. Four qualities are discernible in musical tones — 
intensity, pitch, timbre and harmony. 

Intensity depends upon the amplitude of the wave. 

Pitch depends ujDon the form of the wave, and 
hence on the length of time in which a single vibra- 
tion is executed or the number of vibrations per sec- 
ond. Acute or high tone is produced by rapidly suc- 
ceeding vibrations, grave or low tone by very slow 
vibrations. The*six or seven octaves of a piano cover 
from forty to four thousand per second. 

Timbre or quality is that peculiar characteristic of 
a musical sound by which we may identify it as pro- 
ceeding from a particular instrument or from a par- 
ticular human voice. " It depends upon the number 
and intensity of other tones, called harmonic or partial " 
tones, added to the fundamental tone " (Ladd). 

Harmony describes the fact that several notes 
reaching the ear at once may, if the necessary rela- 
tions exist between the numbers of vibrations, produce 
a sense of concord. Soprano, alto, tenor and bass 
unite to produce a pleasing effect, not from any arbi- 



156 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

trary arrangement of things, but because of the appli- 
cation in musical composition of certain numerical 
laws of vibration. 

7. The functional passivity of the ear favors its*pre- 
ponderating influence in generating mental charac- 
teristics. " The extreme ease of the animal's control 
over the eye, and the absence of any control over the 
ear, made a difference in the degree in which the com- 
mon animal appetites dominated the manner of the 
reception of the two kinds of impression. The pas- 
sivity of the ear allowed auditory impressions to force 
themselves into consciousness in season and out of 
season, when they were interesting to the dominant 
desires of the animal and when they were not. These 
impressions got farther into consciousness, so to speak 
— before desire could examine their right of entrance — 
than was possible by impressions that could be anni- 
hilated by a wink or a turn of the head." Hence au- 
ditory communication of thought, and the enormous 
development of spoken language. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE MOTOR END ORGA:NrS. 

As a description of the various muscle machines 
constructed by Nature to serve as the apparatus of 
mind for voluntary response to stimulus would be 
tedious, and for our main purpose needless, we refer 
the reader for full treatment of the matter to the vari- 
ous manuals of anatomy and physiology. 



SECTION II. 
ANALYSIS OF THE COGNITIVE POWEKS. 



CHAPTER XXXL 

SYNTHESIS OF SENSE IMPRESSIONS. 

1. Every stimulation of an end organ, if it reach 
the brain, occasions a change in the central brain sub- 
stance. 

This change is accompanied by a corresponding 
psychic activity. Here we leap the chasm and pass 
from matter to mind, from force to thought. 

2. If the stimulations of any one end organ are 
successive and the intervals brief, the psychic activity 
is not successive and with intervals, but continuous. 
The sensation of a tone, for instance, is not complex, 
though its occasioning stimulus be composed of thou- 
sands of sound waves. 

3. If many end organs of the same kind be stimu- 
lated at once, the resulting impressions are co-ordir 
nated — that is, they ultimately appear in consciousness 
as one color, or as one chord, or one landscape, some- 
where or somehow connected and co-ordinated for that 
purpose. Take a landscape. Millions of retinal rods 
and cones are involved, and each has its message of 
color for the brain. On the retina the landscape is a 
mosaic of many elements, but in the brain it is a unity. 



158 THE PSYCHIC • FACTOR. 

Each stimulation of color must be referred to that part 
of the field to which it belongs, and all must be com- 
bined. The result is simple, because a psychic process 
of synthesis has gone on. This result we may term a 
construct. 

4. Moreover, if different kinds of end organs be 
stimulated at the same time, the resulting constructs 
may themselves be co-ordinated, and the final psychic 
result still seem quite simple ; as when one suddenly 
grasps your hand, exciting both touch and muscular 
sense, or as when you eat chocolate, and touch, taste 
and smell are all at the same time aroused. 

5. This work of noting, connoting and co-ordi- 
nating does not come into consciousness at all. It 
is a hereditary and instinctive gift, located in nerve 
apparatus, from which in the evolution of the nerve 
system consciousness has withdrawn. In its working 
we probably have a reminder of the psychical func- 
tions and mind activities of much lower stages of 
development than that of man. As it works in the 
dark, we can give account only of its causes and re- 
sults. Treatises on metaphysics have generally ignored 
its existence and potencies, the importance of subcon- 
scious activity only lately having been recognized. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

se]s^satio:n'. 



1. A SEXSATiOK is the psychic correlative of a 
synthesis of sense impressions. The synthesis acting 
as if it were simple, occasions in the brain substance a 
molecular rearrangement, and corresponding to this 



SENSATION. 159 

molecular rearrangement occurs the psychic phenome- 
non of sensation. Of this stupendous correlation we 
can give no account. Well said Lotze : " All efforts 
to demonstrate how it comes about that the merely 
physical motion gradually passes over into sensation 
are wholly in vain. We must rather be satisfied with 
asserting that a necessity of Nature, which has hitherto 
wholly escaped our knowledge, has in fact united the 
two series of processes, the motions and the sensations 
— incomparable and irreducible to each other as they 
are — and has done this in such a way that a definite 
member of the one series always has for its consequent 
a definite member of the other." 

2. Of the nature of the molecular rearrangement, 
also, we know nothing ; but we are permitted to infer 
that it is a change of great permanency, as sensations 
are nearly indelible brain records. This is proved by 
the memory phenomena of dreaming, somnambulism 
and hypnotism, to say nothing of the curious mnemon- 
ic experiences of those who are startled by accident. 
It is questionable whether anything short of organic 
brain disease, or the brain shriveling of old age, can 
erase the record of a sensation once become the prop- 
erty of the mind. 

3. The process of sensation involves time — a brief 
period for the sensory impulse to reach the center, and 
a brief period for the psychic reaction in the center, 
which latter averages about one fifteenth of a second. 
Hence we need not be surprised that impressions en- 
tering very rapidly affect the mind as one continuous 
sensation. The cause is composite, the result simple — 
as when you rapidly swing around a lighted match in 
the dark and see only one ring of fire. 



160 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

4. In order that impression result in sensation, it 
must contrast with what precedes. " The quite grad- 
ual increase in strength of an electric current will at 
length destroy a nerve subjected to its influence with- 
out any sign of sensation. By very gradual increase 
or decrease of temperature, a frog may be boiled or 
frozen to death without making the smallest move- 
ment. The pressure of air is noticed only when it 
varies. . . . There is no series of absolutely independ- 
ent sensations, but every sensation is determined by 
the one experienced immediately before it or at the 
same time " (Hoeffding). 

The necessary contrast may involve each or all of 
three differentia — quality, intensity and tone, all of 
which are relative. 

5. The quality of a sensation depends first upon its 
complexity, and second upon the nature of the stimu- 
lus. Thus, in hearing, a sensation of simple tone dif- 
fers from a sensation of harmony, owing to the varying 
complexities of the sense impressions, though all of a 
kind. And ether vibrations cause light or heat sensa- 
tions, according as the length of the wave classes it in 
and above or below the red ; the stimulus, though in 
both cases vibratory and ethereal, varies greatly in its 
impact, and hence in its result. 

6^ Quantity (or degree) depends upon the strength 
of the impression. An impression must attain a cer- 
tain intensity in order to occasion any sensation at all, 
or, in other words, a certain inertia of resistance must 
be overcome. This point is described as the threshold 
of sensation. The extreme maximum limit of percep- 
tible impression is called the height of sensibility. In 
between lies the range. 



SENSATION. 161 

Increase in quantity depends upon increase in the 
intensity of impression. But the ratio of increase for 
sensation is not the same as for stimulus — rthat is, if 
you would have more sensibility you must increase the 
stimulus not in the same ratio, but in a much greater 
ratio. If a stimulus s produces a sensation ^, 4 ^ will 
not produce 4 x^ but 3 x and 8 s only 4 x. This fact, 
formulated first by Weber, and later more accurately 
by Fechner, is generally stated by psychologists in 
these terms : " The strength of the stimulus must in- 
crease in geometrical progression in order that the 
sensation may increase in arithmetical progression." 
It must, however, be noticed that "Fechner's law" is 
only approximate ; it holds for a medium range of 
sensations, and provided, in the cases compared, the 
attention be constant. Ribot's opinion is that it is 
" verified within certain limits for visual and auditory 
sensations, that it is contested for pressure, and does 
not hold for the other sensations." It must also be re- 
membered that all sensations in threshold and height, 
as well as in intensity, are subject to considerable va- 
riation, due to physiological causes and personal tem- 
perament. 

7. Moreover, the increasing intensity of a sensation 
is discontinuous. "A weight three must increase to at 
least four in order to give a new sensation of pressure ; 
it gives no new sensation if only 3^, 3|-, 3f " (Lotze). 
No explanation is forthcoming. 

8. The tone of a sensation — that is, its pleasurable- 
ness or painfulness — primarily depends upon its relative 
intensity and quality. Timeliness, heredity, habit, 
training, and intellectual, aesthetic, and moral appreci- 
ation, however, come in for a large share in deter- 



162 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

mining both the relative quality and the relative in- 
tensity. Sensations have no absolute tone. 

9. Sensations may not enter into consciousness, 
and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred probably 
do not do so. They make a subconscious record, and, 
unless circumstances call them forth, never emerge 
from the deep into the sunshine. And of sensations 
that come into the purview of consciousness, by far 
the vast majority attract no attention and directly 
sink beneath the surface, as when one is passing over 
the country in a railroad train, listlessly gazing out 
upon the ever-varying landscape. To insure the notice 
of consciousness, and especially to attract its attention, 
a sensation must possess some degree of novelty or 
some measure of attractiveness. Familiar sights, 
sounds, tastes, etc., remain unnoticed ; if we feel them 
consciously at all it is to pass them by as a matter of 
course, unless they be of the sort to habitually appeal 
to love, vanity, fear, or some other strong motive. A 
savage often hears the paring of wild beasts, but this 
is never received with inattention. A sweetheart often 
hears her praises sounded by her lover, but never with 
indifference. If, however, sensations be only habitual, 
monotonous, or stupid, they never venture to obtrude. 

10. The freshness and vividness of sensations are 
intensified by attention. An absent-minded person, 
though a lover of music, may lose the pleasing effect 
of the most beautiful symphony or aria through sud- 
den distraction of attention to some wonted train of 
thought. Either painful or pleasurable sensations 
may be dulled or quite ignored by persistent distrac- 
tion. Consciousness turns the yellow spot of its men- 
tal eye upon the sensation, and it is seen more clearly. 



SENSATION. 163 

Attention modifies the working of Weber's law to dis- 
turb the ever- varying ratio between stimulus and sen- 
sation in favor of the greater intensity of the latter. 
Moreover, it lessens reaction time. 

11. Sensations may be illusory ; they may not re- 
sult from external stimulation, or they may not be 
normal. Quite frequently the end organ in a reversed 
reflex action is aroused by the brain, and the mind 
plays pranks on itself. The optic nerve quivers with 
a message not communicated by the ether waves, the 
olfactory signals an odor not on the breeze, the tongue 
tastes when no food is in the mouth, etc. 

The simulation may be occasioned by disease of the 
end organ, as in deafness, when one hears bells ring 
and gongs sound and voices call, or as in a cold, when 
one smells nothing but imaginary smoke. 

Many persons are subject to auditory spectra ; they 
hear unaccountably music or words or their own name. 
Huxley says : " I know not if other persons are simi- 
larly troubled, but in reading books written by authors 
with whom I am acquainted I am always tormented 
by hearing the words pronounced in the exact way in 
which these persons would utter them, any trick or 
peculiarity of voice or gesture being also very accu- 
rately reproduced. And I suppose that every one 
must have been startled by the extreme distinctness 
with which his thoughts have embodied themselves in 
apparent voices." 

Moreover, such illusions may be at will produced 
by artificial combinations of sensations. Ventriloquism 
is a good illustration of sensory illusion, deceiving the 
ear by simulated tones, and the eye by corresponding 
gestures. Optical illusions are very numerous, because 



164 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

what we ordinarily consider simple yisual sensations 
are often complex aggregates not only of various sen- 
sations tactual as well as visual, but also of recollec- 
tions and judgments. If a continuous series of pic- 
tures of one object be impressed upon one part of the 
retina, the mind judges that they are due to a single 
object undergoing changes. This is the principle of 
the zoetrope. 

It is commonly said that one must believe one's 
senses ; it is evident from the foregoing that this claim 
fails of an absolute validity. In general true, it needs 
careful delimitation ; and much of the superstition that 
has ever cursed the human mind has based itself upon 
mere sensory illusions, through misinterpretation be- 
come delusions — voices from heaven, spectral music, 
ghostly apparitions, and so on. 

12. It must always be borne in mind that a sensa- 
tion is utterly different from the things or motions 
that cause it. The ear is excited by sound vibrations, 
and the eye by light vibrations, but neither sound nor 
sight is in the least like any series of vibrations. 
Moreover, the same stimulus may excite different end 
organs so as to produce sensations which shall not in 
the least be like each other. If a man squeeze your 
hand you feel his friendly touch ; if he squeeze your 
eye you " see stars." Electricity will occasion lumi- 
nosity, taste, smell, or touch, according to its point of 
attack. Different stimuli, on the contrary, exciting 
the same end organs, may also occasion utterly differ- 
ent sensations. On the eye light produces vision, elec- 
tricity a mere luminousness, heat only pain, and sound 
no effect whatever. 

13. Sensations may themselves blend together in 



SENSATION, 165 

groups which seem simple, as when one listens to a 
symphony or an oratorio. Here the sensation of hear- 
ing is composed of a vast number of sensations of 
successive chords of music, and differing qualities of 
voices and instruments. 

14. Sensations form the ultimate material for 
thought. " Systems about fact must plunge them- 
selves into sensation, as bridges plunge their piers 
into the rock. Sensations are the stable rock — the ter- 
minus a quo and the terminus ad quern of thought" 
(James). 

15. Pure sensations can only be realized in the 
earliest days of life, when the babe's experience, again 
to quote James, " leaves its unimaginable touch upon 
the matter of the convolutions, and the next impres- 
sion which a sense organ transmits produces a cerebral 
reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last im- 
pression plays its part. . . . The complication goes on 
increasing till the end of life, no two successive im- 
pressions falling on an identical brain, and no two 
successive thoughts being exactly the same." Wundt 
claims that " pure sensation is an abstraction, which 
never actually occurs in consciousness " ; he urges that 
"every presentation (Vorstellung) is a synthesis of 
a plurality of sensations." 

16. Sensations develop affinities, behaving much 
like the molecules of substances : as these associate 
themselves in series and groupings called compounds, 
so sensations spring into one another's arms, embrace, 
join hands, and form series and groups. Even if they 
enter in comparative isolation, as in case of the sudden 
report of a gun, directly they associate themselves with 
other and relevant sensations. 



166 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

17. There is nothing, seemingly, to forbid the rise 
of new kinds of sensation, divaricating branches of 
those already possessed or based upon entirely novel 
end organs yet to arise. Some animals do apparently 
possess senses not enjoyed by man, and in man there 
are manifest gaps to fill, as a sense to interpret the 
ultraviolet rays of the spectrum, a magnetic and an 
electric sense. Indeed, within a few years able sci- 
entists have announced the discovery of a new series 
of end organs in the semicircular canals; which, com- 
monly considered instruments for gauging the direc- 
tion of sound, are now claimed for a sense of rotation. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE PERCEPTIVE PROCESS. 

1. Is complex. We have been taught to name it 
perception, and assured that it was one of " the fac- 
ulties " ; but really it is a composite of many and dif- 
ferent mental habitudes. It is the whole mind in the 
act of acquiring knowledge. 

The characteristic feature, however, is the exter- 
nalizing of sensations. We have seen that sensations 
are subjective. The perceptive process externalizes 
them. A solitary perception is an aggregate of sen- 
sations externalized. This is why Kant's famous dic- 
tum is true, and the mind does not know anything 
" in itself," but in its qualities. 

2. Mind is equipped for the perceptive process by 
certain original and certain acquired gifts. 

The original gifts are the ideas of time and space, 



THE PEECEPTIVE PROCESS. 167 

which seem to be necessary and universal forms of 
thought. 

The acquired gifts are the mind's practical wisdom, 
the results of previous observation and experience, 
which latter are largely ancestral — that is, instinctive 
— knowledge crystallized in inherited brain structure. 
We receive as a bequest the accumulated practical 
wisdom of countless generations of sentient beings, 
and upon this depends the methods and accuracy of 
our perception. To this ancestral dexterity we grad- 
ually add the acquired dexterities of our own lifetime, 
beginning with early infancy. 

But all this is under the pervasive reign of the 
ideas of time and space. 

3. The evolutionary history of perception, could 
we know its true inwardness, would be one of the 
most fascinating chapters in psychology ; but we may 
only surmise the storyof that dawning knowledge of 
the world which gradually shone — more and more 
unto the perfect day — upon primeval mind, and in 
course of ages, in ever-expanding forms, approached 
man's intuition of the universe. No doubt it is, how- 
ever, in the after-stages, at least dimly recapitulated 
to us in our own infancy and childhood. 

The babe at first experiences sensations, but scarcely 
perceives. Soon, however, the sensations of light and 
sound, of warmth and touch, which at first were felt 
without recognition, begin to excite a responsive smile 
or cry, and the infant is joyfully observed to " take 
notice." From this point onward to manhood life is 
largely a training in perception. 

4. The perceptive process is threefold : it localizes 
sensations in or on the body ; it projects them into 



168 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

space, attributing them to things ; it arranges them, 
where they permit of it, in order of sequence or in 
spatial perspective. 

To do all this it marshals sensation, memory, im- 
agination, judgment and every mental habitude in its 
service. 

(1) Localizing of sensations in different parts of 
the body is the result of observation and experience, 
partly ancestral and partly individual. That it is the 
nose which smells, the tongue which tastes, the eyes 
which see, and the ears which hear, is the inevitable 
conclusion of reasoning based upon touch and mus- 
cular perceptions. Thus to smell accurately one must 
sniff, and sniffing calls attention to the nose. We 
have good reason for believing that subconscious lo- 
calization has become very precise and minute. Lotze 
supposes that every feeling point has acquired a " local 
sign " of its own, whereby it is distinguished at the 
nerve centers from all the others. The particular im- 
pressions at first are intensive merely, but the mind 
gives to them an extensive significance. This famous 
theory of "local signs" is Lotze's principal contri- 
bution to modern psychology. Or, to state it in the 
philosopher's own words : "Every impression of color, r 
— for example, red — produces on all places of the retina 
which it reaches the same sensation of redness. In 
addition, however, it produces on each of these differ- 
ent places, a, 5, <?, a certain accessory impression, a, /8, y, 
which is independent of the nature of the color seen, 
and dependent merely on the nature of the place ex- 
cited. This second local impression would therefore 
be associated with every impression of color, r, in such 
manner that r a signifies a red that acts on the point 



THE PERCEPTIVE PROCESS. 169 

a; r p signifies the same red in case it act upon the 
point b. These associated accessory impressions would 
accordingly render the soul the clew, by following 
which it transposes the same red, now to one, now to 
the other spot, or simultaneously to the different spots 
in the space intuited by it. The result is that we rec- 
ognize the locality of an impression, provided we have 
already had experience at that point, and the more 
habitual the experience, so much the more accurate 
the recognition." 

Fatigue, lowered temperature, or other abnormal 
condition may mar the precision of localization by 
obscuring the impression. 

Disease also may work derangement. 

(2) The projection of sensations is much m.ore 
complicated, as these have no length, breadth, height, 
objectivity, or external reality. Even if localized by 
local signs, they are so far only intensive. 

Projection grants them extension. " Objects are 
perceived in space as situated in a right line off the 
end of the nerve fibrils, which they irritate " (Ladd). 
Thus the retina receives the image of a landscape in 
points of light, exciting a vast number of retinal ele- 
ments, which image is inverted and reversed ; but in 
perception each point of light is referred back to its 
place of origin and given existence in space. 

Hence we have a field of touch and a visual field. 

The field of ^ touch is the most ancient method of 
projection, and must have been acquired by the lowest 
protozoans at the very beginnings of life. This is the 
only field of space persons born blind possess. 

The field of vision easily results from the projec- 
tion of sensations received in images on the retina 
12 



170 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

into space, seriatim. This, in case of compound eyes, 
is manifest ; but it is as true with simple. 

There is no field of smelling, tasting, hearing, etc., 
though sounds are in a measure localized, and odors, 
savors, heat and cold are perceived under at least 
ideas of space. 

(3) The arrangement of projected sensations under 
laws of extension and harmony is yet another function 
of perception, and it may be tactual, visual or audi- 
tory. In the field of touch — direction, the three di- 
mensions of extension, hardness, distance, size, etc., 
are noted. In the field of vision — color, direction, dis- 
tance, perspective, size, etc., are noted. 

Sounds are arranged as successive or contempo- 
raneous in noises, tones, melodies, harmonies, etc. 

Taste and smell, hot and cold, fail of arrangement 
in dimensions, motions or series of any kind, either 
because they are incapable of it or because the faculty 
of perception has not yet been educated to detect the 
laws that govern them. 

5. In the field of touch, perception is determined 
by pressures nicely varied, weighed and compared, 
by muscular sense of resistances also nicely varied, 
weighed and compared, by keen discrimination of the 
degrees of muscular innervations required for move- 
ments, and also no doubt by judgments of temper- 
ature. Pressure, resistance, motion and heat are here 
the prime factors of knowledge. 

In the field of vision, perception depends upon the 
muscular movements of the muscles of the eyeball and 
of the lens, on the sense of innervation, and on the 
differential impression of separate retinal elements. 
It is materially improved by the motion of the eyeballs 



THE PERCEPTIVE PROCESS. 171 

and the conjoint vision of two eyes. Its results are 
corroborated by the aid of touch. 

Of direction we learn by comparing the line con- 
necting the yellow spot and the point of regard with 
general position of the body. 

Form in two dimensions is perceived by the wan- 
dering of the point of regard over an object observed. 
Form in three dimensions results from the conjoint 
use of both eyes viewing the object from slightly 
different standpoints, the images falling on identical 
or corresponding spots of the retina, or from the use 
of the accommodative muscles of either eye. 

Distance is gauged by the angle of muscular con- 
vergence for near objects, and by judgment of aerial 
perspective for those afar. The muscles of accom- 
modation assist for near objects, and if trained will of 
themselves give accurate measurements. 

The apparent size of an object depends upon the 
extent of the retinal image in connection with an esti- 
mate of distance. The degree of illumination avails 
also in forming an estimate. " Distances we estimate 
(very indefinitely) as smaller for bright objects, larger 
for dark ones — much more accurately as smaller so 
long as the interior delimitation of things continues 
to be clear, larger in case it makes a confused impres- 
sion as a whole. We principally, however, employ 
three factors — the actual magnitude of a thing, its 
apparent magnitude, and the distance, in order from 
two of them to ascertain the third " (Lotze). 

6. The result of the perceptive process is a percept 
or intuition of some thing, and how far the thing we 
intuit is identical in its qualities with our percept de- 
pends upon the accuracy of our previous experience 



172 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

and observation and the keenness of our present judg- 
ment. It constitutes at best only a relative and imper- 
fect knowledge, though we are not justified in calling 
it hallucination, as Taine and other experimental psy- 
chologists have done. Hallucination is the external- 
izing of ideas ; the externalizing of sensations is knowl- 
edge. Of course it is knowledge of the world as we 
know it, the world of phenomena, of what appears to 
us and must vary much from the cognition of other 
and different creatures. A dog's world, or an ant's 
world, or a fish's world, could we somehow perceive 
with their end organs, would doubtless much amaze 
us, for both defects and revelations. 

7. This is the more important, because here as 
everywhere illusion is possible. The most correct 
sensations may be faultily projected and arranged, or 
mere subjective feelings or ideas may be externalized 
as realities. I perceive smoke, and there is none. I 
perceive an absent friend who directly vanishes away 
into thin air. I hear my name called when no one 
spoke. I look out from the car window and perceive 
the landscape moving. These illusions are due to dis- 
ease, to faulty judgment, feeble imagination, instinc- 
tive inferences, etc. ; but they condition the accuracy 
of the perceptive process. They may also be owing to 
an overactive imagination ; the same poet or dreamer 
who by normal hallucination makes real his own ideas, 
may, by a reverse process, but through the same cause, 
idealize realities. Wordsworth, speaking of his own 
boyhood, said : " I was often unable to think of external 
things as having external existence, and I communed 
with all I saw as something not apart from, but inher- 
ent in my own immaterial nature. Many times while 



THE PERCEPTIVE PROCESS. 173 

going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to re- 
call myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. 
At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later 
times I have deplored, as we all have reason to do, a 
subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced 
over these remembrances." Tennyson said one day : 
" Sometimes, as I sit alone in this great room, I get 
carried away out of sense and body and rapt into 
mere existence, till the accidental touch or movement 
of one of my own fingers is like a great shock and 
blow, and brings the body back with a terrible 
start." 

Indeed, it is through discovery of our follies of per- 
ception that we become truly informed. Untold gen- 
erations of sentient creatures have bequeathed to us 
their practical wisdom, acquired through countless 
mistakes, failures and miseries, and their bitter expe- 
rience has suffered not in vain. On the whole, and in 
broad averages, our intuitions of the universe are in 
accordance with the facts. Our knowledge of things 
is tentative, but real ; relative, but suitable ; finite, 
but enough. Science has much to do to disabuse our 
minds on many points, but still a " spade is a spade," 
and " a man's a man for a' that and a' that." 

8. Moreover, the education of this perceptive pro- 
cess is still in active operation ; nay, we ourselves may 
each educate perception as we do memory. Commence 
teaching your children when only babes how to see 
and hear everything, and how to judge things accu- 
rately, and long before they themselves open books 
keen eyes and ears will have come for that book which 
is always and everywhere open. This training can be 
made minute. It will be remembered that the two 



174 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR, 

points of a pair of dividers can be distinguished as sep- 
arate when only one millimetre apart on the tongue, 
while on the back sixty-eight millimetres will but just 
suffice to insure .the same results. Now Volkmann has 
shown that education by practice will fully double this 
sensibility for any given part, and in a very brief pe- 
riod. The marvelous tactual perceptiveness acquired 
by the blind affords further illustration. 

9. The vigor of perception depends upon a concen- 
tration of attention upon the psychic action occasion- 
ing it. We may easily see and not perceive, or per- 
ceiving, not perceive clearly. That the process may 
be keen and accurate, the mind must direct and super- 
vise. You smell odors of flowers — you stop, sniff the 
air, and perceive that it is mignonette. Or you hear 
a bell, start up, and on the second stroke, listening, 
perceive that it is the fire alarm. A steamer passes on 
the river ; you shade your eyes, look intently, and per- 
ceive the name on the pilot house. 

10. Perception works as readily below conscious- 
ness as does sensation. Indeed, subconscious percep- 
tion takes cognizance of a world of facts, which the 
surface ego does not immediately, and may never recog- 
nize. Coleridge cites the case of a boy who, at the 
age of four, suffered fracture of the skull, for which 
he underwent the operation of the trepan. He was at 
the time in a state of perfect stupor, and after his re- 
covery retained no recollection either of the accident 
or of the operation. At the age of twelve, however, 
during the delirium of fever, he gave his mother an 
account of the operation and the persons who were 
present at it, with a correct description of their dress 
and minute particulars. 



MEMORY. 175 

Our entire treatment of the subconscious has al- 
ready made this fact emphatically apparent. 

A highly intelligent anonymous Englishwoman, 
who has devoted much attention to crystal vision, one 
day saw in her crystal a first-page column of the Lon- 
don Times and an announcement of the death of a 
lady at one time a frequent visitor in her circle, with 
date, place and circumstances. This startled her, 
and seemed clairvoyance ; it was, however, only mem- 
ory, for later she discovered that the announcement 
had been in a morning paper she had glanced over. 
It had stimulated the retina and been telegraphed to 
the brain, and there became a sensation subconsciously 
perceived; only, however, to sink into the limbo of 
percepts unheeded. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

MEMOEY. 

1. Memory is simply a name for the persistency 
of sensations and of other mental states ; as Cicero 
called it, "Thesaurus omnium rerum." 

It is probable that every mental state leaves some 
indelible record upon the brain. This we infer from 
the flashing into consciousness, at times of startling 
calamity, of a great number and variety of facts sup- 
posed to have been' forgotten, and from the phenomena 
of hypnotism with its multiple mnemonic chains. But 
there are many other sources of information on the 
subject. Old age will often restore events of child- 
hood seemingly utterly lost to mind, while disease in 



176 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

feverish excitement will bring to the front a vast con- 
geries of facts which seemed hopelessly faded. 

The author has observed that, though fine music 
gives him the greatest delight, he easily forgets the 
strain on a first hearing, and can riot after the concert 
repeat a single melody ; but if his mind dwell lovingly 
upon the brief joy and often return to the memorable 
event, after a week or two he is found humming to 
himself the identical lost airs : his mind, impressed 
with his desire to recall the strains, laboriously fishes 
up out of the depths of subconsciousness the seemingly 
lost but really indestructible series of sensations. 

2. While we claim that memories are practically 
indelible, we must not be understood as asserting that 
they are unalterable. The physical apparatus of per- 
manence may itself undergo changes involving con- 
siderable modification of the original sensations. If 
you cut your name into the bark of a tree it will 
remain there until the trunk decays, albeit for five 
hundred years; but the letters undergo gradual dis- 
tortion with the swelling of girth and lapse of time ; 
so sensations recorded may be distorted, fade in dis- 
tinctness, and blur in outline, but without entire efface- 
ment. This fact forms the physical explanation of 
many mistakes and much untrustworthiness in human 
testimony ; the original record may have been truth- 
ful, and it is indelible, but now weather-worn, time- 
eaten. 

3. Forgetfulness is not loss of any part of the ac- 
quired wealth, but only the inability at the moment to 
find the particular item of treasure wanted. The 
memories of most persons are mere junk shops, and 
people acquire only to forget. A retentive, well-stored 



MEMORY. 177 

memory is an orderly museum, where everything is 
labeled, catalogued and easily accessible. 

4. Particular items of memory develop affinities. 
They tend to group themselves together, much as do 
sensations, and under the same laws of association. 
You never find one that does not suggest another. 
Hence we speak of memory's chain, and we may be 
sure the links, though they fall out of sight into a 
deep of subconsciousness, are never dropped. 

5. The intensity of memory depends upon the 
original intensity of attention fixed upon the sensations 
or mental states restored. Facts that enter subcon- 
sciously, or that, unnoticed, are quickly dropped from 
consciousness, though they persist, do not easily come 
up into view, and are among the countless hosts of the 
forgotten. Hence the transitoriness of that learning 
which is described as cramming. As we have not well 
perceived anything which has not fallen upon the 
yellow spot of the eye, so we have not well memorized 
anything that has failed to fall upon the yellow spot of 
consciousness. 

6. In old age, the failure of memory is a breakdown 
of the brain structure. The ganglia shrivel and lose 
weight, size and vitality. The last records go first. 
The physical apparatus may also be erased or confused 
by various forms of disease. Possibly this proves that 
groups of remembered items are, in their physiologi- 
cal records, localized in the brain. We are not, how- 
ever, to suppose that each separate item is stored up 
in a separate nerve-cell, developed or appropriated for 
its indwelling. Eather all the facts bear in favor of 
the hypothesis that every nerve-cell, and indeed every 
cell in the human body, has its own mnemonic series. 



178 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

7. The very extraordinary facts of dual or trinal 
consciousness show that memory admits of curious 
cleavages. A somnambulist recalls in the waking 
stage little or nothing of the sleep-life. A dual per- 
sonality is a memory, crevassed into two; and sub- 
personalities are simply subtrains of consciousness, 
developing each a mnemonic series of its own. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE RECOLLECTIYE PROCESS. 

1. This is the mind's power to restore to conscious- 
ness former mental states. Memory only preserves; 
Recollection revivifies. 

The restoration is only an image or idea of what 
once was a sensation, percept, or other mental state — a 
fainter renewal of the former experience. 

2. We call this a process because, like perception, 
it is very complex, involving the whole mind in use of 
many of its habitudes. It involves 

(1) Personal identity — taking for granted that I 
am the same I that I was. 

(2) Discovery. EecoUection must search the ar- 
chives of memory and find what is wanted— in most 
cases a Herculean task. 

(3) Eecognition. What is found must in the find- 
ing be recognized as the identical former state laid 
away. 

(4) Restoration. This is the faint revival of the 
original state. 



THE RECOLLECTIVE PROCESS. 179 

3. Recollection may work either autoniatically or 
volitionally. In the former case it is suggestion, in 
the latter reminiscence. 

Suggestion is most active in reverie and the vari- 
ous forms of dreaming. Reminiscence is most active 
in those various forms of cerebration which involve 
mental effort. Suggestion is play, entailing but little 
waste of nerve tissue or force, as it follows lines of 
least resistance, and recalls only what is uppermost. 
Eeminiscence is work, and often extremely hard. 

4. The laws that control suggestion and reminis- 
cence are those principles of association already stated, 
under caption of the Enchaining and Grouping Func- 
tion of Consciousness — the laws of simultaneity and 
affinity. Memories cohere, owing to their co-existence 
or immediate succession in time ; owing to their re- 
semblance, contiguity, or integral or causal relation to 
one another. A memory comes up into consciousness 
or subconsciousness only as it is fished out of the 
depths by help of some chain of sequence in which 
it forms a link. But bear in mind that much of this 
chain will likely remain out of sight, and, furthermore, 
that the chain coheres in an infinitely tangled network 
with numberless other lines of association. 

Dreams are immediately forgotten because isolated 
in the act of memorizing from all real fact and event. 
Con over your dream immediately on awaking, write 
it down and talk about it, and it will become easily . 
accessible for future reference, because its affinities 
with reality have been developed. 

5. Hence there may be skill in recollection, and 
indeed there is a science of mnemonics. He will recall 
his memories easily who, in storing them away, pur- 



180 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

posely associates them with other easily accessible and 
similar or contrasted facts, notions, or events. It 
needs only to bring things difficult to recall into touch 
with things easily and often remembered. 

The defect of learning by rote, or of committing 
knowledge verbally to memory, is that the entering 
series is only a single chain, and not, as it should be, a 
network for each link. Great is the confusion of 
one who " parrots off " knowledge, if interrupted " in 
medias res " ; he must commence all over again. His 
recollection is a thread, and threads are easily broken, 
and more often lost. 

The cramming of knowledge is equally defective, 
and for similar reasons. The mind has no time or 
strength of digestion for crude and confused heaps of 
material. Memories are allowed no opportunity to de- 
velop those affinities so useful in recollection. 

Time and attention are both indispensable in the 
real acquisition of knowledge. 

6. The vigor of recollection depends upon a num- 
ber of considerations — whether, for instance, the thing 
to be recalled be vivid, whether it be pleasant, whether 
it have been recalled a great many times, and whether 
it have recently been in review. 

Extraordinary vigor is of course a rare native gift. 
Sir William Hamilton cites the remarkable case of a 
young Italian to whom, in a party of distinguished 
men, words were dictated, countless words, — Latin, 
Greek, barbarous, significant and not significant, dis- 
jointed and connected — until all were wearied but 
the youth, who called for more. Every word was re- 
peated in its order without hesitation. Then, com- 
mencing with the last, he repeated them backward 



THE RECOLLECTIVE PROCESS. 181 

until he came to the first. Then he repeated the first, 
third, fifth, etc., in any desired series. He claimed 
that he could do this with thirty thousand words, and 
even after a year's time. It is said of Grotius and of 
Pascal that they forgot nothing that they ever thought 
or read. Leibnitz and Euler could each repeat the 
whole of the ^neid. 

7. We have seen that a memory may become 
blurred ; we must add that recollection may falsify 
even a clear record. Many habitually exaggerate, un- 
derstate or even distort items of memory presumably 
legible. They purpose no deception, and deceive them- 
selves. This is a form of mental disease. Other defects 
of this faculty are clearly kinds of brain disease, and are 
very curious. Certain things it may be impossible to 
remember, and certain others impossible to forget. A 
man suffering from aphasia can not recall a particular 
letter, and always drops it out ; another, brain fevered 
by remorse, can not put out of his sight, the imploring 
face of his dying victim. The rememberings and for- 
gettings of hypnotics will be thought of in this con- 
nection. 

8. It is as important to learn to forget as to learn 
to remember. The vast majority of the sensations 
that enter the mind are trivial, vulgar, perhaps vile, 
and had best sink quickly to rise no more, down into 
the abyss of the subconscious. When Simonides of- 
fered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, he 
replied that he would rather learn to forget, " for I 
remember even that which I do not wish to remember, 
but can not forget what I wish to forget." 

9. The accuracy of recollection may be unequal for 
different classes of facts. Thoughts are easily recalled, 



182 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

but faces and names forgotten, and so on. Some re- 
member best verhatim^ and some best ad sefisum. This 
is explained by idiosyncrasies of brain formation and 
psychic organization. 

10. A recollection is always fainter than the men- 
tal state recalled. You glance upon a new, beautiful 
face, and it is seen vividly and with lingering gaze ; 
but close the eyes, let all after-images fade, and now^ 
recall it. Alas, what a shadow of that glory in flesh 
and blood ! And hence on, you shall find the image 
fade until you may no longer recall it and only certain 
things about it. But let another be pointed out as the 
very face in memory, and at once recollection rejects. 
It may not be able to show what the countenance is, but 
it can readily say what it is not. Manifestly in sub- 
consciousness there is a more correct image preserved, 
than recollection can recall. 

11. As we might expect, recollection takes much 
more time than the original state, if that have been a 
sensation, as this has not only to be revivified but first 
discovered and recognized. In other words, it takes 
longer to find a specimen in a museum than to place 
it on the shelves. 



CHAPTEE XXXVI. 
iMAGi:i!irATio]sr. 

1. Imagination is the mind's power to hold up 
before itself for study the mental states it has recalled. 

By this function the mind idealizes its preceding 
states ; while we perceive by sense what is present, we 
form an idea of what is absent. 



IMAGINATION. 183 

Yet the idea is not so much a picture as a real 
revival of the sensory or motor elements of the thing 
ideated. It is not a sensation nor a percept, but still a 
true sense form. 

Hence was it we found imagination so important 
an element in the recollective process. 

3. These ideas or sense forms are distinguished 
from sensations by less intensity. Only in cases of 
hallucination do they have equal or greater intensity. 
Gaze at a friend and study well her countenance ; now 
close your eyes, allow the after-images to fade, and 
then, still with eyes closed, visualize her face : you 
will at once learn how inferior to perception is the 
idea or sense form. The English painter who could 
call up images of his sitters, even when they had been 
before him for only half an hour, so that he could 
perfect their portraits in their absence, was mentally 
unbalanced, soon lost power of distinguishing imag- 
inary from real persons, and spent thirty years in a 
madhouse. Sense forms in normal minds are weaker 
than sensations. 

3. Ideas or sense forms originate in the sensori- 
motor ganglia. Destroy these, and imagination ceases 
as certainly as sensation and perception. Extirpate 
the optic ganglia, and you not only fail to see, you fail 
to imagine anything as seen ; you can not even imag- 
ine darkness. 

Persons of unusual facility in visualizing may by in- 
tensely thinking red cause a complementary green on 
the retina of the closed eye. It is hard to imagine a 
labial with the lips apart. The author, in recalling 
the very distressing incident of seeing one of his sons 
sink into the water of a swimming pool beyond his 



184 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

depth, always finds himself tending to draw up his 
own body just as he saw his son do it ; he remembers 
the incident not only in visual, but also in motile sense 
forms. 

This fact furnishes a method of classifying imag- 
inations. They are visual, audile, tactual, motile, ac- 
cording to the kind of sense forms mostly used. Per- 
sons extraordinary in one of these are very likely to be 
deficient in the others. 

4. Hence the realm of imagination is the whole 
universe of the created, the limited, the composite. 
It does not and can not include the Deity which is 
uncreated, unlimited, incomposite — the sense forms 
can not picture God. All pictures of the Deity are 
anthropomorphic, and so mere approximations and dis- 
tortions. We can think and know God, but not by 
imaginative processes. 

This is the truth in modern agnosticism. The very 
fact that agnostics argue about an Infinite proves that 
such a being is thinkable and tentatively knowable. 
We could not predicate ignorance of something which 
could not come into thought. 

5. The material of the imagination being the end- 
less variety of the universe, to equip a mind for its best 
ideation, observation must be lively and the store of 
knowledge full. An ignorant poet — an Ossian or 
Homeric druid — -may have an intensity of ideas, but 
these are simple, few, and oft-repeated. A sublime 
spirit, high as heaven, wide as the horizons and deep 
as ocean, requires as a feeder the keen observation of 
a Shakespeare, or the learning of a Milton, a Cole- 
ridge, or a Goethe. Well said a French wit, " The soul 
of the poet is the mirror of the world." 



IMAGINATION. 185 

6. Since the mind can construct and create in 
sense forms as well as restore, we usually speak of the 
reproductive, the constructive and the creative imag- 
ination. 

The reproductive serves recollection. 

The constructive rearranges, readjusts, divides and 
joins together. 

The creative discerns the as yet unthought. 

Or we may classify imagination according to the 
method of its processes, and declare it natural, logical 
or poetical. In the first case it folloAvs Nature's order 
of suggestion and association ; in the second, the logi- 
cal sequence, working inductively or deductively ; and 
in the third it aims at poetic effect by appealing to 
the sense of the beautiful. 

But always the ideation will reproduce, construct or 
create, the selection of methods of proceeding being 
largely a matter of disposition, education, etc. 

7. Figures of speech are very common instances of 
the play of the constructive function. " Intelligence 
rarely allows itself in speech without metaphor ; we 
seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is 
something else." (George Eliot.) As when Ulysses 
compared Nausicaa to a young palm tree springing up 
by the altar of Apollo, as when Wieland declared that 
his soul was as full of Goethe as the dewdrop of the 
morning sun. Names of things are almost always 
imaginative, as when the Coreans call flame the fire 
flower, and say, when they want you to strike a light, 
" Make the flre flower blossom." The ancient Mexicans 
and Peruvians beheld gorgeous humming birds glitter- 
ing over gay flowers— motion on wings — symmetry ra- 
diant — gems aflight — flashing emerald, ruby and sap- 

13 



186 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

phire light, and they called them names meaning "rays 
of the sun," and " tissues of the day-star," " living sun- 
shine," and "day-star light." Language is full of 
such poetry. Of coarse much more is involved here 
than the mere conception of the sense form ; but it is 
the constructive ideation in the general process, which 
leaves on the words their unfailing phosphorescence. 

8. Dreaming is the play of constructive imagina- 
tion, enhanced in its exuberance by the very fact of 
the withdrawal of the primary control. Ideas become 
both relatively and absolutely more intense than in 
waking moments. 

Somnambulism, natural and induced, is but a 
dreaming vivid to action, in which imagination is 
quickened and controlled from without. 

Hallucination finds this constructive function its 
very organ. Eeverie is a kind of self-induced halluci- 
nation, in which we dream while awake. Ordinarily it 
is passive, involuntary in its play of fancy, and enfee- 
bling of intelligence. 

The constructive imagination of the brain worker 
is very different from this delicious trdumerei. Eev- 
erie is a train of fancies following the line of least re- 
sistance ; literary or artistic or musical composition 
seeks lines of greatest resistance, and is work involv- 
ing severest mental discipline and resulting in sub- 
stantial mental products. 

So it goes, 

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact. 

The lover frantic 
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt : 
The poet's eye, in a fine phrensy rolling, 



IMAGINATION. 187 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 

And in imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown : the poet's pen . 

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothings 

A local habitation and a name." 

9. Imaginative creation is not true of the human 
mind, except in a relative way. It is simply the cre- 
ation of sense forms never, conceived before, and de- 
pends not so much upon vivid power of imagination as 
upon splendid gifts of elaborative genius. Of this 
genius we will speak in another connection. 

10. The intensity of ideas depends not upon the 
intensity of the occasioning or original sensations, but 
upon the amount of feeling originally stirred by those 
sensations. The idea bright is not necessarily more 
intense than the idea dark. Those ideas are vivid 
whose accompanying sensations enlist our interests 
to a marked degree ;^ and such are most likely to recur 
in recollection and in construction. 

Intensity may reach that dangerous pitch where 
sense forms are mistaken for things perceived ; then 
the superstitious see ghosts and hear mysterious noises, 
cowards start at their own shadows, murderers are 
haunted by visions of their pale victims. 

Pessimism enlarges evil and minimizes good, 
while optimism enlarges good and minimizes evil. 
The imagination is a telescope of all powers, and you 
may use either end. 

Many of the fond delusions of mankind concerning 
its own destiny are so accounted for. The dream of a 
golden age — far back in the past — and the expectation 
of a golden age yet to come — far forward in the future 
— only emphasize the innate imaginativeness of that 



188 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

universal humanity, in which faith never dies, in which 
" hope springs eternal." '' He who has imagination 
without learning, has wings without feet." (Joubert.) 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES — C0]SrCEPTI0:N", JUDG- 
MENT, AKD reaso:n^ikg. 

1. We combine these three processes, because they 
all give exercise to the one psychic power of com- 
parison. Conception compares ideas to form con- 
cepts ; judgment compares concepts to form proposi- 
tions ; reasoning compares judgments to reach conclu- 
sions. The difference between a judgment and a con- 
clusion has been thus stated : " A judgment is knowl- 
edge that is reached, a conclusion knowledge that 
becomes." 

3. Conception. The mind compares ideas of a 
kind, and abstracting qualities, possessed in common by 
all, forms a general notion or concept. This process 
seems to depend upon the persistency of mental states 
and their natural affinity for one another. It pertains 
to the grouping function of consciousness. Ideas of a 
kind blend together and become, to use Eomanes' 
figure, a sort of composite photograph in which in- 
frequent characteristics fade into indistinctness and 
common features alone appear. Thus the concept 
" tree " is the result of long observation of trees and 
the constant occurrence of the ideas of this maple and 
that beech and yonder pine. A composite idea, which 



THE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES. 189 

is all trees in general and none in particular — in short, 
the general notion " tree " — has thus arisen. Psycho- 
logically speaking, such words are concepts ; in com- 
mon parlance they are terms. 

3. To concepts may be attributed quantity, quality 
and relation. 

In quantity, they have extension (area, Umfang) 
and intension (content, Inhalt). The greater their 
extension so much more numerous the individual 
notions they represent ; the greater their intension the 
more varied their qualities and restricted their range. 
" Man " is more extensive than " orator," because ora- 
tors are only a small class of men ; but " orator " is 
more intensive than " man," as the orators have all the 
qualities of men besides those of their own class. 

In quality concepts are clear or obscure, distinct 
and indistinct. They are clear when we can well 
discriminate thenu from other concepts. They are 
distinct when their individual parts can be discrimi- 
nated one from another. 

In their relation to one another they may be 
classed in matter of extension as exclusive, coexten- 
sive, subordinate, co-ordinate, or intersecting ; and in 
matter of intension as identical or different. 

4. Judgment compares idea^, perceives a relation, 
and forms a proposition. K judgment is thus the ex- 
pression of a perceived relation ; it, too, like the con- 
cept, has quantity, quality and relation. 

In quantity, judgments are universal — "All men 
are mortal " ; or particular — " Some men are virtu- 
ous " ; or individual — " Caesar was a conqueror." 

In quality, they are affirmative or negative. 

In relation, they are categorical or conditional, 



190 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

and, if conditional, then hypothetical, disjunctive, or 
dilemmatic. 

5. Seasoning is simply a comparison of judgments, 
with inference — as Eomanes defines it, " the faculty of 
deducing inferences from a perceived equivalence of 
relations." 

For the various methods of doing this, wisely and 
unwisely, we must refer the reader to the manuals on 
logic. 

6. To say that man is the reasoning animal does 
not properly differentiate him from the brutes. All 
vertebrates form judgments, and probably they com- 
bine them into reasoning processes. We believe that 
in dogs, pigs and horses intelligence attains a high 
degree of ratiocination. Insects also are quite ration- 
al, the ants in their logic seemingly surpassing many 
races of savages. 

7. Inferences which are complex to a feeble mind 
may be very simple to one larger and keener. It takes 
a long while to convince a savage, used to counting no 
more than five on the fingers of one hand, that six 
times five are thirty. A civilized child, however, per- 
ceives this as a self-evident truth, and, without pro- 
cess of calculation, asserts it as axiomatic — as simple 
to him as the proposition " The sky is blue." 

It seems likely, then, that all processes of inference 
are but the crutches of a halting mentality. And 
thus reason, instead of differentiating man from the 
brute, rather shows his inferiority to possible higher 
intelligences. It is not extravagance to surmise that 
what seems to us obscure conclusion of long and tedi- 
ous reasoning may oftentimes be of a simplicity to 
appear luminous to a higher grade of mind. The child 



TEE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES. 191 

spells its one-syllable word letter by letter ; the scholar, 
however, reads by sentences and by paragraphs. The 
savage counts five on the fingers of one hand ; a Zerah 
Colburn instantly on demand gives the correct results 
of complicated stupendous mathematical computa- 
tions. Just so, while the uncultivated thinker works 
out his conclusions by tedious process of syllogism, 
genius sees the result at the beginning, and the high- 
est processes of logic to the man of to-day are but the 
a b c of the man that shall be, and the clearly seen ax- 
ioms of mind suprahuman. 

8. Just here genius asserts its superiority. It has 
been very generally associated with the creative imagi- 
nation, as without a high degree of the latter its mar- 
velous outbursts would be clearly impossible ; but in 
essence genius is an extraordinary assertion of judg- 
ment. It sees with . intensity its images, but much 
more it discerns inferences with j)revision. Says Eus- 
kin : " Hundreds of men can talk for one who can 
think, but thousands can think for one who can see. 
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in 
one." Genius looks in many directions ; it may be 
poetical, literary, musical, artistic, political, military 
and metaphysical. It has been noticed of valuable 
discoveries that they are so simple, and we wonder 
that even we ourselves did not perceive the obvious 
fact. They awaited an eye that could penetrate their 
secret. Watt's steam engine, which seemed an intu- 
ition, was only the inference of genius. All great sci- 
entific discoveries are made by the leaping inference 
of genius before the actual demonstration. Columbus 
discovered America before he left Palos ; Leverrier 
saw the planet Uranus long before he gazed upon it 



192 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

through the tube. Napoleon was a great general, be- 
cause he could readily foresee eyery possible combina- 
tion of his enemies, and every possible contingency ; 
the batteries of his unerring judgment won the battle 
ere his brazen artillery opened fire. Bismarck and 
Gladstone are great in genius, because they judge 
more simply and more accurately than other men. 
Back of all immortal verse, there is not only the 
beauty of art, but also the sublimity of lofty infer- 
ence. 

The creations of genius may seem flashes out of 
absolute darkness, epochs in the history of thought^ 
but in reality they are only the discoveries by great 
minds of facts Nature is hiding. The poet, painter, 
dramatist, or prophet detects in the ordinary and tran- 
sient its elements of ideal and imperishable beauty, 
truth, or goodness, and constructs a poem, a painting, 
a theory, an invention, a parable in righteousness, that 
needs must live because a revelation of the universe to 
human nature or of human nature to itself. 

9. Genius finds its response in minds of a second 
grade that can not be called " creative." Geniuses 
are few and far between ; their lives are a " sublime 
storm " ; they are isolated like lighthouses from the 
rest of the world, lifted up like snow-capped mountain 
peaks into the heavens and into the gales. More nu- 
merous are those lesser natures that understand, inter- 
pret, and teach the world to adore them. Let the 
Deity give to whom he will his signet ring, but let no 
gentle or noble nature fail to aspire to this second 
glory — to understand, to interpret and to defend. 

10. Wit is a keen play of the comparative processes 
discerning apt but unusual relations and contrasts be- 



THE COMPARATIVE PEOCESSES. I93 

tween things. Its simplest and easiest form is the pun 
or play upon the varying meaning of a word, which may 
be uttered in soberness to emphasize a truth, or in mer- 
riment to point a joke. In the Hebrew Scriptures the 
use is serious, as when Samson punned upon the jaw- 
bone in his song of triumph, or when Jesus compared 
the Spirit to the wind. No better punning of the sec- 
ond class can be cited than that of Senator Evarts, 
who, when Lord Coleridge demurred at the old story 
of Washington having in his youth thrown a dollar 
over the Eappahannock, replied : " But, sir, a dollar 
would go farther in those days than now ; and, more- 
over, it seems less improbable that he threw a dollar 
across a river, when you reflect that he threw a sov- 
ereign across the sea ! " 

Proverbs, epigrams, aphorisms, and all short, pithy 
sentences, are but witty, humorous, or satirical judg- 
ments. Alger declares aphorisms "portable wisdom, 
the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling." 
An old Latin recipe for a proverb prescribes that it 
must be "like a bee, short and sweet, and with -a sting 
in its tail." 

Wit often marks great minds, and generally it 
accompanies genius ; sometimes, however, its keen 
incongruity is rather an evidence of oddity or mental 
unbalance — as in the case of the lunatic who said 
to a visitor in the asylum, " Sir, I am Alexander the 
Great " ; and on a subsequent occasion, to the same 
gentleman, " Sir, I am Napoleon Bonaparte." " Oh ! 
but," expostulated the visitor, "the last time I was 
here you were Alexander." The lunatic mused a mo- 
ment, tapped his head thoughtfully and responded, 
" Did I ? Well— that was by my first wife ! " . Or as 



194 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

in the case of that Irishman who, when accused of 
cowardice for running off the field of battle, said, 
" Shure, and it is better to be a coward for five min- 
utes, than to be dead intoirely all the rest of me 
life!" 

It has been claimed that wit must be spontaneous, 
but this does not at all follow. Professional wits find 
it necessary to resort to premeditation. Dean Swift 
would lie abed wide awake, mornings, preparing ex- 
tempore flashes of wit for the day. Washington Irving 
would swing on gates on sunny mornings, busied in 
the same kind of industry. 

11. Humor adds the element of absurdity, which 
is as truly interwoven into the very fabric of the uni- 
verse, and into the warp and woof of history, as the 
beautiful, the sublime, or the painful. It is a habit 
of viewing things on their grotesque side, and is sep- 
arated from contempt by a certain element of sym- 
pathy. It dwells upon the whimsical and fanciful in 
life and character. While wit does not by any means 
always cause laughter, humor never fails to provoke, 
if not laughter outright, at least a smile. The infinite 
humorsomeness of Sheridan appeared when, the night 
his theatre burned to the ground, he quietly seated 
himself in a public house near by and in sight of the 
flames sipped wine calmly. Expostulated with by 
friends for this astounding indifference to the wreck 
of his fortunes, he calmly replied, " Surely a man may 
be permitted to drink a glass of wine at his own fire- 
side!" 

13. Satire is judgment reflecting the irony of fate, 
the inconsistent in character and pitiful in destiny 
forming its subject ; for mockery seems omnipresent 



THE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES. 195 

in Nature and in history, and the satirist only echoes 
the bitter laugh of a somewhat in the universe 
itself. 

The Turks say, " Cross the sea and drown in a 
brook." The Chinese assert that " Order the coffin 
and the man won't die." And the Spaniards reflect 
that " The worm has ever a poor case w^hen the chick- 
en is judge." A Saul falling on his own sword in 
Mount Gilboa just as Israel is about to obtain glory, a 
David fleeing from his own son Absalom, a Marius 
amid the ruins of Carthage, a KTapoleon at St. Helena, 
a Christ crowned with thorns and enthroned upon a 
cross — in such themes does satire delight. 

13. Comparison is also the faculty of classification, 
which, is only an enlargement of the process of con- 
ception. Discerning likenesses between things, which 
therefore seem allied, we group them together in a 
class and name them with a word. Discerning like- 
nesses between these classes, which therefore seem 
allied, we again group these together in a higher or 
more comprehensive division, and name this with a 
word. So we proceed, our describing name ever be- 
coming more extensive and less intensive. Men, 
women and children — black, red, brown, and white 
— become "man"; then man, monkey, ape, etc., be- 
come the simian ; then the simian, the ruminant, the 
carnivore, etc., become the mammal ; then the mam- 
mal, the reptile, etc., become the vertebrate ; then the 
vertebrate, the mollusk, the annulose, etc., become the 
animal. The individual notions, Tom, Dick, and 
Harry, cover little ground but many qualities. The 
common notions, man, monkey, ape, etc., lose depth 
but gain in amplitude. Classification, as it proceeds, 



196 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

spreads out the notion until it becomes quite diapha- 
nous. 

This is the method the mind pursues to enable it 
to grasp a multitude of objects ; it differs from mere 
enumeration, in that the latter simply grasps at num- 
bers. We comprehend numbers in groups, ten units 
one ten, ten tens one hundred, etc. ; but the groups 
indicate nothing more than collective enumeration. 
Classification, pursuing the same methods, uses a de- 
scriptive nomenclature and groups on system. 

Again we are reminded of the limitations of our 
knowledge. As mind must reason step by step, so it 
must hold and master its knowledge group by group. 
Hence the necessity of libraries, with alcoves and cata- 
logues ; of museums, with rooms, cases and descriptive 
labels ; and, in the mind itself, of pigeon-holes and a 
mental index. We may call classification the method 
of learning — the system of knowledge. 

14. A word on the communication of judgments. 
Had men been created, or indefinitely continued to be, 
solitary individuals, mating only for a season, as do 
most animals, a hundred times the period of human 
evolution would not have sufficed to impart civilization. 
Man needed not only the heritage of ancestral judg- 
ment, but the assistance of social common sense. As 
a social being he learns to express judgments readily, 
and in the interchange " mind sharpeneth mind." 

It is significant in this connection that social ani- 
mals have at least rude methods of exchanging judg- 
ments, and their progress toward civilization is always 
in exact ratio to their powers of expression. Ants have 
a ready (though unknown to us) method of thought- 
transference, and hence a high degree of civilization ; 



THE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES. I97 

and even buffaloes, wolves and marmots understand 
each other. 

T. W. Cowan, a close and accurate observer of bees, 
declares that the voice organs of his pets are three- 
fold — the vibrating wings, the vibrating rings of the 
abdomen, and a true vocal apparatus in the breathing 
aperture of the spiracle, the first two producing the 
buzz, and the last the hum. He believes that he 
has truly interpreted the various significant sounds. 
Hum-m-m is the cry of astonishment. Wuh-wuh-wuh 
glorifies the incessant accouchements of the queen. 
Shu-u-u is the frolic note of young bees at play. 
S-s-s-s means the muster of a swarm. B-r-r-r is the 
appropriate call in slaughter or expulsion of the 
drones. The tu-tu-tu of the newly hatched queens 
is answered by the qua-qua-qua of the queens still 
imprisoned in their cells. 

Similar discoverfes, with help of the phonograph 
are claimed on behalf of the monkeys by Garnier, 
and the facts proved certainly deserve closest at- 
tention. 

15. The history of expression began with the glance, 
the growl, the purr, the wagging of the tail, the ges- 
ture. Later came facial movement, chiefly teeth-gnash- 
ing, knitting of the brow and grimaces. In man, this 
speech of bodily signs attains its greatest perfection in 
the infinite variety of eye-glances, of feature-move- 
ments, ingenious shruggings and significant gestures. 
All sign language can be grouped conveniently under 
three principles : 

(1) Of altered innervation, as when strong emo- 
tions react upon central organs so as to cause trem- 
blings, blushings, erections of hair, etc. 



198 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

(2) Of analogous sensations, as when we express 
disgust by posturing the mouth and face. 

(3) Of significant motions, as when we wrinkle the 
forehead to suggest a wrinkle in the mind, or point 
heavenward to bring to mind an overruling Provi- 
dence (Wundt). 

16. Verbal language is the flowering of expression ; 
and once invented it becomes the prime cause and the 
most accurate measure of human evolution. " A lan- 
guage is to be considered the collective brain of a na- 
tion : the vocabulary shows the richness of its ideas, 
the syntax how it works them." 

In its beginnings verbal language is strongly phys- 
ical, like sign language ; for men learn to speak long 
before the age of self-study. " All roots are expressive 
of sensuous impressions only ; and all words, even the 
most abstract and sublime, are derived from roots " 
(Miiller). These roots indicating activities became 
subject, verb and object by variations in sound or dia- 
critical additions. As thought gained in powers of 
discrimination, adjectives and adverbs were introduced 
to name perceived qualities, and to indicate the how, 
when and where. Prepositions came to express rela- 
tions now more and more manifest. Finally, conjunc- 
tions indicated the working into language of the laws 
of thought. Elaborate syntax and affectation of style 
must have been, in all cases, the result of high civili- 
zation. 

Hence, to study the language of a people, from its 
rude beginnings, is to unearth their history, their cus- 
toms, their social, political and mental growth. The 
comparative study of the Aryan languages has given 
scholars a very fair acquaintance with the conditions 



THE COMPARATIVE PROCESSES. 199 

of an ancient people, whose story was long since lost, 
even to tradition. A close scrutiny of the word-forms 
and syntax of any race will restore their logical pro- 
cesses and rhetorical conceptions. Indeed, the history 
of philosophy will never rest content with records and 
legends ; it will go far back of all remains to the reve- 
lation of word derivations and linguistic forms in 
primitive languages. 

Hence, in general, the great value of linguistic 
studies. They teach one not so much to speak as 
to think. Our own processes of judgment are thus 
multiplied, varied and corrected, by comparison with 
the mental processes of other peoples and ages ; while 
the comparison itself, with its necessary research and 
nice balancing of many considerations, is a discipline 
in both analytic and synthetic thinking of supreme 
value. 

17. The expression of thought assists the forma- 
tion of thought : so that some thinkers have boldly 
claimed that there is and can be no thought vv^ithout 
language, and no growth of thought without expres- 
sion — notably Max Miiller. Eibot goes so far as to 
assert that thought is a word or an act in a nascent 
state. However this may be, if you would disentangle 
a confused mass of reasonings, put them down in syllo- 
gisms. If you would think clearly on any subject, 
talk it over and force yourself to write out your 
thoughts. The labor of expression will be found an 
effort of the mind to analyze and arrange its own pro- 
cesses. Painstaking composition greatly expands and 
simplifies intellectual operations. 

18. We have found all the other psychic powers 
imperfect in working ; the comparative processes are 



200 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

no exception in this regard. They may work delusive- 
ly, under sway of prejudice, superstition, skepticism, 
etc., and inferences as well as judgments may be ill- 
formed, unbased in logical verity, and if not whole lies 
at least only half truths. The history of fallacies, in 
simple and compound judgments, would be almost the 
whole story of human fraud, delusion, folly, prejudice, 
superstition and cruelty. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

FORMAL THOUGHT. 

1. Knowledge is of two kinds, empirical and 
formal. The former is special, incidental, phenome- 
nal ; the latter is universal and necessary. 

Formal knowledge comprises the laws of thought, 
feeling, and volition, or, in other words, the limita- 
tions and inner necessities of psychosis. 

The Greeks named this mental realm the vovs; by 
the Germans it is styled the Pure Eeason; while to 
the Scotch metaphysicians it has been the Eegulative 
Faculty. 

2. The limitations and necessities alluded to are 
purely subjective. Psychic action presupposes them. 
No amount of perception or length of experience 
could supply them, even by heritage. They are not 
necessary because the mind so regards them ; but the 
mind so regards them because they are necessary. 

3. The senses supply the material, the reason sup- 
plies the form of thought. Without the senses and 
the sense habitudes, mind would be utterly vacant ; 



FORMAL THOUGHT. 201 

without reason, mind would be mere chaos. First, 
when reason regulates sense, have we cosmos. 

4. Formal thought is the last object of contempla- 
tion in self-study. Animals, savages and children of 
this think never. Such thinking as they do, of course, 
conforms to the laws of mind, but they do not reflect 
upon this fact, nor classify nor even recognize these 
principles. Hence, though these ultimate data are 
necessary — semper^ iihique et ah omnibus — yet are they 
by no means ever, everywhere and by all perceived. 

Descartes argued thus, human existence : cogito 
ergo sii7n^ " I think, therefore I am " ; and it is true 
that thinking is the best logical condition of faith in 
one's own being. But, as a matter of fact, man 
says sum — " I am " — before he declares cogito — " I 
think " ; and it is last of all he asks himself how and 
why he thinks. The study of the inner limitations 
and necessities of psychosis is the last and the highest 
and most difficult effort of the mind. 

5. There are three ultimate forms of conscious- 
ness — knowing, feeling and willing. Attempts have 
been made to reduce these seeming ultimates to unity 
but in vain; the result has proved supersubtle, im- 
probable and utterly barren. 

6. Each of this trinity in action runs for its own 
goal. 

Knowledge compels us to the true or the false. 

Feeling has in further view the beautiful and the 
foul. 

Willing ever involves some aim of good or bad. 

The true, the beautiful and the good are as ulti- 
mate seemingly as knowing, feeling and willing. 
Here again efforts have been made to secure unity, 
14 



202 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

but only by a sort of metaphysical violence which is 
as unjustifiable as it is valueless. 

7. Embracing all knowing, feeling and willing are 
the two ultimates, Time and Space. Here again at- 
tempts have been made at derivation. Thus Wundt 
claims that space is a synthesis of local signs and 
movement. Duration and extension you may define 
and analyze, but not time and space. If you had not 
these ideas already in stock, you could not by any 
amount of experience evolve them ; indeed, did they 
fail, you would do no thinking at all What has 
been shown has been not the genesis of the formal 
thought, but only its slow dawning upon human con- 
sciousness as thought. 

8. The laws of thought as thought — that is, the 
laws of logic — are also regulative functions of the 
mind. They could not have been evolved, for they are 
presupposed in thought itself. 

(1) Of identity. A = A. 

(2) Of contradiction. Of two contradictories 
only one can be true. A — A = 0. 

(3) Of excluded middle ; which compels us, of 
two contradictories that can not both exist, to think 
of the one or of the other as existing. A either is or 
is not. 

(4) Of reason and consequent, or there is reason 
for every inference. A is, because. This is the law 
of logical cause and effect, and at least analogous to 
the physical law of the same title. 

9. That particular things are or are not beautiful, 
formal thought does not inform us ; for what is pleasant 
to one may be disagreeable to another, and what is foul 
to this man may seem fair to that ; but that the beau- 



FORMAL THOUGHT. 203 

tif ul is beautiful and that the foul is foul is regulative 
necessity. The laws of taste and sentiment, though 
as yet feebly discerned, are at least emerging into con- 
scious importance, and beyond reasonable question are 
not conventional, but as inevitable and imperative as 
the laws of logic. 

Wundt claims that beauty may be reduced to the 
idea of order. The beautiful is the orderly. Like- 
wise the moral is simply that which is useful, and re- 
ligious sense is a mere process of reasoning or analogy. 
All such vain efforts mistake the history of the dawn- 
ing of sentiment, morality and religion upon the 
human mind in savagery, for the basic principles of 
sentiment, morality and religion themselves. 

10. The laws of volition are likewise ultimate and 
in the very nature of choice. 

That man is free to choose (in narrow limits), and 
that responsibility accompanies such choice, in right 
doing and in wrong doing, is clearly basic fact, form- 
ing a " moral consciousness," a realm of conscience. 

11. As the mind progresses in self-study, it is 
clearly seen that three ontological facts loom up in the 
background of all thinking — being, infinity, eternity ; 
and these three coalesce in a consciousness of Deity. 
All highest philosophy faces this sublimity, and though 
in crass and ignorant minds it be latent, the truth 
even here asserts itself in a yearning toward the in- 
finite and in a universal religiousness. For this Being 
is not living matter, and this Infinity is not indefinite 
extension, and this Eternal is not endless duration. 
Living matter is limited, being is absolute. Indefinite 
extension is made up of parts, endless duration is 
composed of successive moments. Eternity is incom- 



204 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

posite, outside of past, present, and future, a unit. 
Infinity is not composed of spaces and distances, but 
undivided and indivisible, an absolute Unity. 

You can not prove the existence of a Deity by 
any reasoning process, for there may be nothing in a 
logical conclusion, which was not in the premises ; and 
if God be in your premises, you have begged the ques- 
tion. If he be not in your premises, he will not be 
logically found in your conclusion. 

Man is the only animal who has attained sufficient 
psychic expansion for this recognition of the Divine ; 
and of men, only few have risen into clear discern- 
ment of the Absolute ; though probably none are so 
low as not to respond to some influence of this 
presence. 

12. There are certain objective necessities, learned 
by experience, that have come to sway thought in a 
formal way, much as if originally subjective. Thus 
the distinctions of matter, life and mind ; also mathe- 
matical and physical laws, which at first observed ac- 
quire the force of postulates. " Two and two make 
four." " Two particles of matter can not occupy the 
same space at the same time," etc. 

In this class of intuitions probably belong personal 
identity and personal unity. That I am myself at all 
times and in all places, and that I am one person — 
these seemingly necessary postulates are no doubt re- 
sults of long human experience and refiection — facts 
discovered by the race, but born as necessary forms of 
thought in the individual. 



KEVIEW. 205 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

REVIEW. 

1. Strictly speaking, there are no faculties, and 
only the mind in differing phases of psychic action. 
What we name such are simply constitutional modes 
of mental behavior. 

3. Every mental act or state is complicated with 
other mental acts or states. "We analyze psychic phe- 
nomena and describe the simple elements, but the 
phenomena themselves are never simple. 

3. Notwithstanding this complexity, the search- 
light of consciousness can not play upon many groups 
of phenomena at once. If any but confused thinking 
is to be done, attention must be directed to one group- 
ing, and abstraction for the time from all others en- 
forced. The success of Hegel is in part explained by 
the fact that he took a manuscript to his publisher in 
Jena on the very day when the battle of that name 
was fought, and to his amazement — for he had heard 
or seen nothing — he found French veterans, the vic- 
torious soldiers of Napoleon, in the streets. Mo- 
hammed falling into lone trances on the mountains 
above Mecca, Paul in Arabia, Dante in the woods of 
Fonte Avellana, and Bunyan in prison, form eloquent 
illustrations of the necessity of mental seclusion and 
concentration in order to arrive at great mental re- 
sults. 

4. The relative vividness of mental states has 
much to do with defining their locus. Perceptions 
are in general more vivid than memories, and both in 



206 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

general mucli more vivid than concepts. Ordinarily 
attention will prevent hallucination. 

5. Psychic acts or states often perish stillborn or 
later in infancy, or still later in childhood or youth. 
Many impressions on end organs do not stimulate them 
sufficiently to secure a message to the brain; hence 
no resulting sensations. And, then, many sensations 
are not vivid enough even to enter the subconscious- 
ness ; hence no resulting perceptions. Many percep- 
tions are too faint to link themselves to common trains 
of thought ; hence, pushed aside, they are unused by 
imagination or comparison. Many ideas are not in- 
tense enough to attract attention ; hence no judgment 
based on them. Many judgments are exceedingly 
feeble or inaccurate ; hence no inferences. 

6. How can even the most cautious thinker assure 
himself of accurate acquaintance with his surround- 
ings in view of the proved imperfection of all our men- 
tal apparatus ? He can not ! All sciences have to be 
regularly readjusted every few years. We are none 
adepts, and all novices. As Socrates said in Phaedo, 
"Many are the wand -bearers and few are the mys- 
tics." 

7. While there is an evolutionary history of the 
cognitive powers, there is no evolution of the powers 
themselves. They all seem at least nascent in the early 
forms of life. The gradual development of the facul- 
ties connects itself with the history of the growth of 
the end organs and of the central nerve masses, and 
with the fact, never to be forgotten, of the withdrawal 
of consciousness from lower to higher nerve ganglia. 

8. The evolution of a psychic function ougiit to 
cast no doubt upon the knowledge it has in time com- 



REVIEW. 207 

municated. Seven and six make thirteen, even if it be 
proved that our ancestors, like many savages of to-day, 
could not count more than five on the fingers of one 
hand. The small beginnings of science, art, ethics and 
religion do not in the least discredit the true, the beau- 
tiful and the good. Psychic evolution has been a find- 
ing out. The Parthenon is no less beautiful as a tem- 
ple, nor the Principia profound as a book, nor the 
death of Joan of Arc sublime as heroism, because the 
ancestors of architect, mathematician and enthusiast 
were clothed in skins, and ate raw flesh, living in holes, 
counting fingers, and burying alive their aged parents. 
Plato was once an unconscious babe ; but he had be- 
come a man of sublime intelligence when he wrote 
the Phaedrus and Symposium. Shakespeare was once 
an infinitesimal droplet of protoplasm, but he came to 
be the supreme genius of literature. Just so the hu- 
man race had its babyhood, and knowledge confesses 
to a slow development, but the resulting wisdom is not 
therefore vain. 



SECTION III. 
THE FEELINGS AND THE WILL. 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE FEELINGS. 

1. Feeling is a primary mode of psychic activity, 
and, being ultimate, admits of no definition, and much 
less of analysis. Feeling is to feel ! It is not to be 
confused with sensation, which, though usually toned 
by the pleasurable and the painful, is in itself entirely 
intellectual. 

2. Feeling has had its evolutionary history. It ap- 
pears simply in the lowest forms, and becomes compli- 
cated in the higher only with multiplication of nerve 
masses and general psychic development. As knowing 
begins in naked protoplasm, a mere sensitiveness to ex- 
citation from without, and willing in a mere self-con- 
tractility, so feeling commences in protoplasmic experi- 
ence of pleasure and pain. The inf usorise seem to suffer 
and to enjoy, to love and to hate, to hunger and to be 
angry. Insects prefer the beautiful, and birds appre- 
ciate fine music and gay plumage. Love of young and 
of mate is strong even among very humble creatures. 
Sense of right and wrong, vanity, pride, self-righteous- 



THE FEELINGS. 209 

ness, hypocrisy and remorse are common among mam- 
mals. 

3. Peelings are characterized by tone, strength, 
rhythm and content. These will be considered in 
order, in the following sections. 

4. By tone we mean pleasurableness or painfiil- 
ness ; that is, the mind is never in a condition of in- 
difference emotionally toward any of its mental states, 
and its emotional interest always involves more or less 
of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Why this is so we 
can not say ; it is an ultimate fact. 

(1) The zero point between pleasure and pain is 
variable with time and clime, with individuality, and 
with bodily and mental condition. A joy for one 
is a pain for another, a pleasure to-day will be sor- 
row to-morrow, a sport in winter may be torture in 
summer. 

(2) Tone depends upon the relative intensity and 
upon the quality of the mental states in question. Ex- 
periences ordinarily delightful, if too intense, give rise 
to pain. 

(3) The conditioning quality depends upon a 
variety of laws. Pleasure may result from the gratify- 
ing of a mere physical craving, as of hunger ; or it may 
indicate harmony with aesthetic or moral impulses. 
Emotional quality may be high or low, good or bad, 
and can be understood in its workings only when we 
can trace it out with help of close study of past his- 
tory, individuality and environment. 

5. Peelings themselves are characterized by relative 
intensity, which is conditioned by the vigor of excit- 
ing causes, the general vitality, the current healthful- 
ness, etc. 



210 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

6. Feelings are said to be rhythmic, because subject 
to periodicity. They rise and fall with the rhythmic 
movement of the nerve cells they use. As feeling 
makes severer demands upon the nerve reservoirs than 
cognition, exhaustion follows more quickly : an explo- 
sion is speedily succeeded by depression. Eapid and 
high elevation above the zero point is followed by 
rhythmic fall below that point. Children who laugh 
before breakfast cry before night. An ecstasy of joy 
reverts into a nausea of satiety or an agony of melan- 
choly. The feelings of tropical people are violent, be- 
cause, usually leading a sluggish life, their batteries of 
nerve force become heavily charged, and so capable of 
tremendous explosion. 

This rhythmic peculiarity of feeling explains the 
superficiality of overemotional natures. Eeaction 
follows soon. When the three comforters came to 
Job to convince him that it served him right to suffer 
woe, Bildad, the fiercest, was the soonest silenced. 

Explosions often relieve nervous tension caused by 
pent-up force, uneasy to be released. To weep pro- 
fusely relieves sorrow ; to grumble solaces discontent ; 
to slam a door gives vent to wrath ; to pray helps the 
penitent to peace ; to sing and leap and laugh afford 
relief to overjoy. 

Herbert Spencer has called attention to the fact 
that expressions of emotion by dancing, poetry, or mu- 
sic always have assumed a rhythmical character. 

7. The content of feeling is as hard to classify as 
the mind's treasury of thoughts. The variety of feel- 
ings is as endless as of thinking. Various classifica- 
tions have been attempted, but with questionable suc- 
cess ; about the best we can do is to describe them as 



THE FEELINGS. 211 

sensuous, aesthetic, intellectual, or moral. The divid- 
ing lines, however, are indistinct, and many feelings 
can be named that belong to two or more of these 
classes. Thus the emotion excited by a delicious 
strain of music may be intellectual, ought to be 
aesthetic and surely is sensuous. 

8. Neither the tone, strength, rhythm nor content 
of any given feeling on any given occasion is absolute, 
but conditioned on circumstances, individuality, tem- 
perament and point of view. 

9. Feelings may be conscious or subconscious, au- 
tomatic, reflex, or voluntary. In other words, they in- 
terpenetrate all psychic activities, at all times and 
under all conditions. Waking and sleeping, in higher 
and lower nerve centers, and in every kind of nerve 
utterance we feel. 

10. Feelings furnish coloring and tone for intel- 
lection. Even if the content of a thought be pure- 
ly intellectual — and it seldom is — the motives and 
aims are sure not to be so. Sensuousness, prejudice, 
and aesthetic and moral considerations interpenetrate 
everywhere; hence the danger of inaccuracy in the 
working of all the cognitive powers. Facts are dis- 
torted and judgments shaded and arguments vitiated 
by feeling. And then, on the contrary, the pursuit of 
truth is stimulated, fraud is abhorred, lies avoided, and 
facts asserted courageously, because of feeling. It 
curses and it blesses. 

On the whole, feeling is as safe a guide to reality 
as thinking. The beautiful and the good are as ulti- 
mate as the true, and feeling is quite as likely to be 
normal as willing or thought. To deny the objectivity 
of beauty and right and the validity of taste and con- 



212 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

science is mere skepticism, leading only to psycho- 
logical absurdities. 

Feeling needs education, and receives it in artis- 
tic study and moral and religious restraints and 
exercises. 

11. Feelings furnish motives for action. We eat 
because we are hungry and fight because we hate, sigh 
because sad and rave because in love. Without such 
prompting there could and would be no action at all. 
A pain, a want, a desire, an antipathy, an affection, 
an enthusiasm, must antedate all voluntary or involun- 
tary, conscious or subconscious, action. 

12. Feelings have their language, and when thus 
expressive are called emotions. They utter themselves 
directly in interjections, and indirectly in other forms 
of speech through accent and emphasis. Facial ex- 
pression, gesture, and the well-known outlets for pas- 
sion, all convey to others easily our liking, love, hate, 
scorn, admiration, sympathy, or delight in truth, in 
art and in righteousness. Uncultivated natures are 
very demonstrative because they fail of education, 
which, teaching self-control, suppresses any frank dis-^ 
play of feelings. Culture, developing the language of 
thought, represses the language of feeling. 

13. The diseases of feeling belong to three classes : 
incongruity, excess and lacking — the wrong kind, 
too much, and too little. Herein find explanation 
most of the unnecessary agonies of men, and much of 
the vice, crime and pain with which they torment 
themselves and one another. 



WILLING. 213 

CHAPTER XLL 

WILLING. 

1. The will is a name for the self -determining 
function. Like knowing and feeling, it is a primary 
mode of psychic activity, admitting neither of analysis 
nor of definition. Willing is to will. 

2. It appears in mere naked protoplasm as a self- 
determined contractility. In zoospores, spermatozoids, 
etc., it attains a variety of action. In animal and vege- 
tal persons it occurs as a common function, controlling 
the general movements of the protoplasms in contact. 
With the appearance of nerve cells and muscles, its 
range both of excitation and of execution is vastly en- 
larged. Indecision, resolution and willfulness are to 
be found in all the higher animals. 

3. The end organs of willing are the muscles, and 
the media of control are the efferent or motor 
nerves. This machinery is worked by discharge of 
force generated in nerve cells, the act of discharge 
being consciously or subconsciously volitional. Such 
force is derived from the break up of the highly com- 
plex and unstable nutritive material supplied by the 
blood, and is the release of a kind of explosion. (See 
p. 27.) 

Hence vigorous self-determination depends upon 
plentiful and wholesome blood supply, or ultimately 
upon good food well digested and good air well in- 
haled. The secret of energy, and even of ethics, in 
the last analysis, is largely in sound digestion and good 



214 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

ventilation. Lessen or vitiate the supply of blood, and 
you may produce any desired degree of inaction and 
helplessness. On the contrary, cerebral congestion in 
a vigorous person (as in the insane) may generate tre- 
mendous outbursts of muscular activity and stern reso- 
lution. 

4. Willing, in intensity, ranges up and down a 
scale in which are three degrees — wishing, purposing 
and determining. Weak volition wishes, resolute voli- 
tion purposes, while strong volition acts. 

5.' Willing may be automatic, reflex, or voluntary, 
and may take place in single cells or in groups of cells, 
consciously or subconsciously. 

6. The diseases of will are : (1) Indecision, culmi- 
nating in inaction, dreams, reverie, hallucination, hyp- 
nosis ; or (2) willfulness, culminating in insanity ; or 
(3) perversity, culminating in self-determination coun- 
ter to higher motives and in defiance of laws of rec- 
titude. 

7. Willing is powerfully controlled through the 
feelings by the cognitive powers. An intelligent 
person acts in harmony with his mental judgments, 
an upright one in obedience to his moral judg- 
ments, a narrow mind in servitude to his preju- 
dices, and a fool in chase of his dreams, whims and 
fancies. 

On the contrary, willing exercises a powerful con- 
trol over both the thinking and the feeling. It can 
regulate thought by calling upon the appropriate fac- 
ulties and forcing them to do their work ; it can in- 
flame or restrain passion by discriminate manipulation 
of the proper nerve centers. Were this not so, no men- 
tal work would ever be done and no moral accounta- 



WILLING 215 

bility ever incurredc We can play upon our cognitive 
and emotional natures much as a musician upon his 
instrument, the while he — and we — are ourselves affect- 
ed by our own music. 

8. There is no willing without motives furnished 
by feeling. The most absorbing and important con- 
troversy in all ages has been whether these motives 
control, necessarily, as absolute causes of action, or 
whether mind has any real power of self-determination. 
It is admitted by all that motives occasion; but do 
they determine? The automatists, and all material- 
ists. Stoics and fatalists, and among theologians the 
Calvinists who believe in absolute Divine decrees, say 
yes. But consciousness, conscience and common sense, 
denying this atrocity, affirm human freedom. The 
range of choice may be very narrow, but within this 
range the will is free. The method of this freedom is 
a very great mystery. It seems to involve an act of 
causation, a new beginning, in each determination. 
It introduces into human affairs an element of caprice, 
which, if the sphere of choice were less limited, might 
prove fatal to consistency and remove history from the 
domain of science. Yet, undoubtedly, that element of 
caprice is present in all human conduct, and, as Froude 
the historian admits, history is not and can not be an 
exact science. 

9. As the grade of being rises, self-determination 
becomes less limited by conditions. Among proto- 
zoans, freedom and necessity must be almost inter- 
changeable terms. The same is true of our own indi- 
vidual cells and lower nerve centers. As personality 
becomes emphatic in the progress of evolution, the 
range of freedom enlarges. With this enlargement ap- 



216 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

pears development of what we call the moral nature. 
What we name moral feelings become so because in 
them personality determines itself in lines of rec- 
titude. 

Personal character, though exceedingly complex, 
is largely the result of volition manipulating other 
psychic elements, and in turn manipulated by them. 
As every cognitive state leaves its traces in memory 
and in modified mental habitudes, and as every feeling 
adds its increment of modification, so every volition 
cuts its own figures and works its own results ; hence 
regret, self -contempt and remorse, and the opposite. 
A Commodus, a Caesar Borgia, or a Marat alongside of 
a St. Cecilia, a Francis of Assisi, or a George Washing- 
ton show how low or how high human character may 
fall or rise. The mind is a tablet, on which has been 
engraven tokens of all deeds and feelings, good and 
bad ; and discernment of character is the truthful read- 
ing of these fateful hieroglyphs. You are what you 
have made yourself to become. Circumstances condi- 
tion the outer appearance and the superficial display of 
the nature ; but responsible choice carves out the per- 
manent moral character. Plato, in his Gorgias, pic- 
tures Ehadamanthus as finding the soul of the tyrant 
" full of the prints and scars of prejudices and wrongs, 
which have been stamped there by each action." Lu- 
cian, in his Dialogues of the Dead, makes the departed 
strip before the judge for examination ; and he avers 
that burned in upon the breast of every one are found 
marks left by the sins of a past life, unseen of mortal 
eyes yet visible to divine justice. And our own Ten- 
nyson only voices the moral sense of the whole world, 



WILLING. 217 

and puts into picturesque form the conclusions of pro- 
foundest ethical philosophy, when he sings of the 
unjust man, that he 

** . . . bears about 
A silent court of justice in his breast, 
Himself the judge and jury, and himself 
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned." 



15 



INDEX. 



Absent-mindedness, 46, 59. 

Acceleration of nervous activ- 
ity in hypnosis, 90. 

Actinozoa, 31. 

Alcoholism, 115. 

Animal magnetism, 102. 

Ants, amazing psychic activity 
of, 32-34 ; education of their 
young, 52. 

Aphorisms, 193. 

Arrangement of projected sen- 
sations, 170. 

Association of ideas, 47 et seq. 

Atavism in crime, 122. 

Attention, 42 et seq. ; in sensa- 
tion, 162 ; in perception, 174. 
See also 205. 

Auditory spectra, 163. 

Automatic action of nerve cells, 
28. 

Bacteria^ possessing an oxygen 
sense, 16, 17. 

Beauty, 202, 203. 

Bees, education of young, 52. 

Being, 203. 

Bernheim's method of hypno- 
tizing, 85. 

Black art, 101. 



Bodo caudatus, 21, 22. 

Bougainvillea, 30. 

Brain, evolution of, 35, 36; 

effect of losses, 39 ; greed, 64 ; 

care of, 65, QQ, 

California woodpeckers, won- 
derful intelligence of, 57. 

Catalepsy in hypnosis, 88. 

Centiped, psychic behavior 
when beheaded, 31, 32. 

Character, personal, 216. 

Christian science, 63. 

Classification, 195. 

Comparison, 188 et seq. 

Conception, 188, 189. 

Consciousness, its retreat, 38, 
39 ; in general, 42 et seq, ; 
withdrawal in dreaming, 
73, 

Conservation of energy in psy- 
chosis, 29. 

Co-ordinating lobes, 35-37. 

Cramming, 180. 

Criminality, 120 et seq. 

Cross-mesmerism, 97. 

Crystal vision, 100, 101, 175. 

Deity, 203, 204. 



H 



220 



THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 



Desmids, their sunshine sense, 

17. 
Disease cured and caused by 

ideas, 62, 63 ; psychology of, 

118 et seq. 
Dogs, inheritance of habit, 55. 
Dreaming, 72 et seq., 186. 

EcJiinodermata, 31. 

Ecstasy, 47. 

Education, in prevention of 
crime, 125 ; of sensation, 173, 
174. 

Electro-biology, 102. 

Ellis, on crime, 120. 

Emotions, 212. 

End organs, 128 et seq. 

Epidemics, of hysteria, 118, 
119 ; of crime, 123. 

Eternity, 203. 

Ethical bearings of hypnotism, 
99. 

Evolution, as a working theory, 
9, 10 ; in general, 128, 129. 

Expression, laws of, 197; his- 
tory of, 198, 199. 

Eye-specks, 147. 

Faculties, 205^ 
Faith-cure, 63? 
Feeling, 201, 202. 
Fevers and hallucination, 115. 
Forgetfulness, 176, 177, 181. 
Formal thought, 200 et seq. 
Functions, effect of mental 
states upon, 61. 

Ganglia, relative value of mass 
and weight, 37. 



General sense, 131, 132. 
Genius, 187, 191, 192. 
Guilt of crime, 126, 127. 
Gustatory buds, 142. 

Habit, 28, 50, 52 et seq. 
Hallucination, 110 e^ seq., 172, 

186. 
Hammond, on the inheritance 

of habit, 54. 
Harmony, 155. 
Hearing, 152 et seq. 
Hebrew prophecy, 109, 110, 
Heredity in crime, 122. 
Humor, 194. 
Hydra, 25, 26. 
Hypnosis, 84 et seq. 
Hypnotic sleep personality, 91, 

et seq. 
Hysteria, 118 et seq. 

Ideas, 183. 

Identity, personal, 204. 

Illusion, 206 ; in sensation, 163, 
164; in perception, 172; in 
memory, 176 ; in recollec- 
tion, 181 ; in imagination, 
187 ; in the comparative pro- 
cess, 199, 200. 

Imagination, 182 et seq. 

Inference, 190. 

Infinity, 203. 

Inhibition, 28 ; in hypnosis, 90. 

Insanity, 115, 116. 

Insomnia, deceptive, 77. 

Inspiration, 106, 107. 

Instinct, powerful even ^ at 
birth, 56, 57; fixed by inher- 
itance, 55 et seq. ; in inverse 



INDEX. 



221 



ratio to initiative intelligence, 
58. 
Intensity, relative, of mental 
states, 205. 

James, on sensation, 165. 
Janet, on hysteria, 119. 
Jerks, the, 119. 
Judgment, 189. 
Jakes family, 122. 

Kea, the, 56. 

Kittens, born with inherited 

habits, 55. 
Krause, corpuscles of, 34. 

Ladd's theory of dreaming, 75. 

Language, 196 et seq. ; of bees, 
197 ; of monkeys. 197. 

Le Conte, on instinct, 55, 58. 

Lemming, the stupidity of its 
instinct, 58, 59. 

Leonie B , 93, 94, 108, 109. 

Lethargy in hypnosis, 87. 

Living matter always psychic, 
14. 

Localization of sensations, 168. 

Logic, laws of, 202. 

Lotze, on relation between mo- 
tions and sensations, 159 ; on 
local signs, 168, 169 ; on 
vision in estimate of size, 
etc., 171. 

Lucidity, 107 et seq. 

Memory, in hypnosis, 95; in 

general, 175 e^ seq. 
Metaphysics, 185. 



Micro - organisms, psychic, 

1-24. 
Mind-cure, 63. 
Morgan, Lloyd, on instincts 

fixed by natural selection, 57. 
Morphine, results of use of, 114. 
Multiple personality, 93 et seq., 

178. 
Muscular sense, 136 e/ seq. 
Myers, F. "W. H., on multiple 

personality, 94, 95. 
My sis, auditory hairs in tail of, 

153. 

Nature-worship, 112. 

Nerve force, speed of, 26; source 
of, 27. 

Nerve systems, 24 et seq., 30 
et seq. 

Nervous dyspepsia, 64. 

Nervous prostration, 64, 65. 

Newnham, Rev. P. H., experi- 
ments in thought-transfer- 
ence, 105. 

Oracles, 101. 
Oscillatoria, 17, 18. 
Ovid, on habit, 53. 

Pacini, corpuscles of, 133. 
Pandorina, pigment spots, 17. 
Percept, 171. 
Perception, 166 et seq. 
Personal identity and unity, 

204. 
Personality, multiple, 93 et 

seq., 178. 
Pigeons, intelligence of, 52. 
Pigment spots, 147. 



222 



THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 



Pitch, 155. 

Plants, as distinct from ani- 
mals, 16. 

Postulates, hereditary, 204. 

Pressure spots, 134. 

Projection of sensations, 169. 

Proust, remarkable case of sec- 
ondary personality, 92. 

Psychology, defined, 1 ; history, 
1, 2, 3 ; scope, 10 ; future, 10 ; 
methods, 11, 12; bibliogra- 
phy, 12, 13. 

Putrefaction, evidence of psy- 
chosis in, 22. 

Reaction time, 29. 
Reasoning, 190. 
Recollection, 178 et seq. 
Reflex action of nerves, 28. 
Reminiscence, 179. 
Retina, the human, 148. 
Reverie, 186. 
Rhythm of emotion, 210. 
Rogue elephant, 120. 

St. Vitus's dance, 119. 
Sanitation, moral, 125. 
Satire, 194, 195. 
Savages and hallucination. 111, 

112. 
Secondary personality, 92 et seq. 
Self-determination, 215. 
Sensation, 158 et seq. 
Sensationalism as affected by 

thought-transference, 106. 
Shakespeare on habit, 52. 
Sight, 146 et seq ; estimates of 

distance, etc., by, 170, 171. 
Sleep, 69 et seq. 



Smell, 138 et seq. 

Somnambulism, 80 et seq. ; in 
hypnosis, 88, 89. 

Space, 202. 

Specific energy of nerve cells 
and systems, 28. 

Speculation, value of, 3 ; de- 
fects, 4 ; theories of mind, 5 
et seq. 

Spinal cord, relations between 
enlargements and psychic 
development, 34-36. 

Subconsciousness, 67 et seq. ; in 
sensation, 162; in percep- 
tion, 174. 

Suggestion, in hypnosis, 89, 95, 
96 ; as a phase of recollection, 
179. 

Surprise, 45, 46. 

Swallows, intelligence of, 52. 

Synthesis of sense impressions, 
157, 158. 

Taste, 142 et seq. ; laws of, 202, 

203. 
Temperature end organs, 144 

et seq. 
Thought-transference, 103 et 

seq. 
Timbre, 155. 
Time, 202. 

Tissue plants, psychic, 21, 22. 
Tobacco, results of use of, 113, 

114. 
Touch, 133 et seq. ; estimate of 

size, etc., by, 170. 

Union relief and pauperism, 
125, 126. 



INDEX. 



223 



Unity, personal, 204. 

Yolvox, 18. 
Vorticella, 23. 

Wagner, corpuscles of, 134. 
Wasp, wonderful instinct of 

the, 57, 58. 
Will, the human, freedom of, 

215. 



Willing, 201, 202 ; laws of, 203, 

213 et seq. 
Wit, 192, 193. 
Witches, 101. 

Yellow spot of human eye, 149, 

Zero point, of temperature end 
organs, 145 ; of feeling, 209. 
Zodthamniiimy 24. 



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